SAFETY ISSUES WHEN DRIVERS OVERTAKE BICYCLISTS: OVERTAKING PROXIMITIES, VEHICLE TYPE, HELMET USE, AND BICYCLIST'S DISTANCE-TO-KERB

大多数人的旅行都不到2或3英里长。这通常是骑自行车最快的，但人们经常开车。人们错过了宝贵的锻炼机会，正在给我们的城镇造成大量不必要的污染，并在碰撞中相互残杀。人们不会更多地骑自行车，因为他们害怕被车撞。在英国，每年至少有100名骑自行车的人死于汽车撞击，2000多人受重伤。这里提出的这项研究旨在降低骑自行车的人发生此类事故的可能性，这将鼓励更多的人骑自行车。汽车和自行车之间的碰撞往往发生在道路交叉口。然而，当汽车超车时，也会发生碰撞，当这种情况发生时，情况会很严重，因为被超车撞到是骑自行车的人可能遇到的最糟糕的事情之一。如果我们理解了是什么决定了司机在超车时与骑车人的距离有多近，我们就可以采取一些措施来降低碰撞的可能性，要么是在我们修建道路的方式上，要么是更有可能的是，向骑自行车的人提供关于他们应该如何骑行的建议。目前关于是什么决定了司机的超车距离有三个大的想法，我们计划对它们进行测试。第一个想法是，当司机超过骑自行车的人时，司机离开的距离与骑自行车的人之间的距离有关。换句话说，许多骑自行车的人确信，如果他们骑车离开路边，司机在超车时会留出更多空间，让骑自行车的人更安全。我们知道，许多骑自行车的人依赖这种想法来保证他们的安全，但它从未经过适当的测试，我们所拥有的都是基于人们经验的大量不科学的报告。这个想法迫切需要适当的测试。我们计划给一辆自行车安装一个距离传感器，并将其送入电脑。这将记录每辆车经过自行车时的距离。计算机还将从摄像机(这样我们以后就可以看到超车是什么)和麦克风中获得信息，这样骑自行车的人就可以记录下人们超车时发生的任何其他有用的信息。通过在一系列道路上骑自行车，我们可以直接测试自行车向左的距离会影响司机超车时留下的空间这一想法。我们还可以看到，真正重要的不是骑自行车的人左边的空间，而是道路或车道有多宽。这款仪表式自行车还可以让我们测试我们感兴趣的另外两个想法。首先，一些车辆--尤其是公交车--将以一种比其他车辆更危险的方式超越骑自行车的人。我们之所以怀疑这一点，是因为我们最近对近5000名骑自行车的人进行了调查，并询问了他们发生过的任何事故。我们发现，涉及公交车的事故从其他碰撞事件中脱颖而出，因为它们几乎都发生在公交车超车时。因此，我们非常想看看这项研究中的公交车超车是否有显著的不同。我们希望做的最后一件事是，骑车人一半时间戴自行车头盔，一半时间不戴头盔。许多有经验的骑车人报告说，如果骑自行车的人戴着头盔，司机在骑车时会更加粗心。如果这是真的，这表明戴头盔实际上可能会产生与预期相反的效果，并将佩戴者置于更大的危险中。因此，人们很感兴趣的是，当骑自行车的人戴着头盔时，司机是否比没有戴头盔的人倾向于更近地超车。这项研究的结果将广泛分发给感兴趣的各方。无论结果如何，都将对指导道路安全活动非常有价值。因此，我们将通知地方和国家政府和其他道路安全组织(如Brake、RoSPA)和对自行车安全感兴趣的组织(CTC、LCC等)。

Most of the journeys people make are less than 2 or 3 miles long. These would usually be fastest by bicycle, but people drive more often than not. People are missing an opportunity for valuable exercise, are causing tremendous amounts of unnecessary pollution in our towns and cities, and are killing one another in collisions. People don't cycle more because they're scared of being hit by a car. At least 100 cyclists die from being hit by cars each year in the UK and over 2,000 are seriously injured. The research proposed here aims to make it less likely that cyclists have such accidents, which will encourage more people to cycle. Collisions between cars and bicycles tend to happen at road junctions. However, collisions also happen when cars overtake and when this happens it is serious, because being hit by an overtaking car is one of the worst things that can happen to a cyclist. If we understood what determines how close drivers get to the cyclists as they overtake, we could do something to make collisions less likely, either in the way we construct our roads or, more likely, with advice to cyclists about how they should ride. There are currently three big ideas about what determines drivers' overtaking closeness, and we plan to test them all. The first idea is that the distance a driver leaves when overtaking a cyclist is related to the distance the cyclist left between themselves and the edge of the road. In other words, many cyclists are convinced that if they ride away from the edge of the road, drivers will leave more space as they overtake, making the cyclist safer. We know that a lot of cyclists rely on this idea for their safety, but it has never been properly tested and all we have are lots of unscientific reports based on people's experiences. The idea urgently needs testing properly.We plan to do this by fitting a bicycle with a distance sensor feeding into a computer. This will record how far away each vehicle is as it passes the bicycle. The computer will also get information from a video camera (so we can later see what the overtaking vehicles were) and a microphone, so the cyclist can record any other useful information about what is happening as people overtake. By riding the bicycle along a series of roads we can directly test the idea that the distance to the bicycle's left affects the space drivers leave as they overtake. We can also see whether the really important thing is not the space to the cyclist's left but perhaps how wide the road or the lane is. This instrumented bicycle also allows us to test the other two ideas we are interested in. The first of these is that some vehicles-particularly buses-will overtake cyclists in a more risky way than others. We suspect this because we recently did a survey of almost 5,000 cyclists and asked them about any accidents they had had. We found that accidents involving buses stood out from other collisions, as they almost all happened as the bus overtook. We are therefore very keen to see whether bus overtaking is notably different in this study.The final thing we wish to do is to have the rider wear a cycle helmet for half the time and no helmet for half the time. A lot of experienced riders report that drivers are more careless around a cyclist if the cyclist is wearing a helmet. If this is true, it would suggest that wearing a helmet might actually have the opposite effect to that intended, and put the wearer in greater danger. It will therefore be of great interest to see whether drivers tend to overtake closer when the cyclist is helmeted than when he has no helmet. The findings from this study will be widely distributed to interested parties. The results, whatever they prove to be, will be very valuable for guiding road safety activity. We will therefore inform local and national government and other road safety groups (e.g., BRAKE, RoSPA) and groups interested in cyclist safety (CTC, LCC, etc.).