Impacts of Intersection Treatments and Traffic Characteristics on Bicyclist Safety

US Transportation Collection2022PDFTech ReportRusso, BrendanHurwitz, David S.Kothuri, SirishaSmaglik, Edward J.Scott-Deeter, LoganLemcke, DavidYates, ElizabethOregon Department of Transportation. Research SectionUnited States. Department of Transportation. Federal Highway AdministrationOregon Department of Transportation. Research SectionUnited StatesBehaviorBicycle crashesCrash dataHighway safetyIntersectionsTraffic characteristicsFHWA-OR-RD-23-02Final reportThis study assessed the safety impact and performance of three different bicycle-specific intersection treatments (bike boxes, mixing zones, and bicycle signals) using surrogate safety measures (i.e., bicycle-vehicle conflicts and other non-crash measures). To date, limited research had been conducted to analyze how these treatments along with traffic characteristics (e.g., bicycle, pedestrian, and vehicle volumes) impact the frequency and severity bicycle-vehicle conflicts, and research was needed to provide practitioners guidance on when and where to install these treatments. To develop this guidance, this project analyzed data collected from three sources: data reduced from videos at 12 field study sites, microsimulation modeling, and a bicycling simulator experiment. Through estimation of Poisson regression models and other statistical analyses of these data, guidance was developed which provides practitioners information on when and where to consider installation of these treatments based on bicycle, vehicle, and pedestrian volumes, road user speeds, and other bicyclist behavioral characteristics.140