On the evaluation of visual nudges to promote safe cycling: Can we encourage lower speeds at intersections?

Abstract

Objective

Crashes between cars and cyclists at urban intersections are common, and their consequences are often severe. Typical causes for this type of crashes included the excessive speed of the cyclist as well as car drivers failing to see the cyclist. Measures that decrease the cyclists’ speed may lead to safer car-cyclist interactions. This study aimed to investigate the extent to which cyclists may approach intersections at a lower speed when nudged to do so.

Methods

Visual flat-stripe nudges were placed on bicycle lanes in the proximity of uncontrolled intersections (with a history of car-cyclist crashes) in two locations in Gothenburg, Sweden. This specific nudge was the one obtaining the best results from a previous study that tested different nudges in controlled experiments. Video data from the intersections were recorded with a site-based video recording system both before (baseline), and after (treatment), the nudge was installed. The video data was processed to extract trajectory and speed for cyclists. The baseline and treatment periods were equivalent in terms of day of the week, light, and weather conditions. Furthermore, two treatment periods were recorded to capture the effect of the nudge over time in one of the locations.

Results

Leisure cyclists showed lower speeds in treatment than in baseline for both locations. Commuters were less affected by the nudge than leisure cyclists. This study shows that visual nudges to decrease cyclist speed at intersections are hard to evaluate in the wild because of the many confounders. We also found that the effect of visual nudges may be smaller than the effect of environmental factors such as wind and demographics, making their evaluation even harder.

Conclusions

The observed effect of speed might not be very high, but the advantage both in terms of cyclist acceptance and monetary cost makes an investment in the measure very low risk. This study informs policymakers and road authorities that want to promote countermeasures to intersection crashes and improve the safety of cyclists at urban intersections.

Keywords:

• Cyclist behavior
• visual nudge
• surrogate safety measures
• site-based naturalistic data

Data availability statement

The data in this study are not publicly available.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Ethics statement

This study was performed in accordance with the ethical guidelines for naturalistic data collection in place in Sweden in 2019.

Additional information

Funding

This study was part of the project MeBeSafe funded by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 program (No. 723430).