Study worth watching

Came across this study at the University of Bath that is due to start
soon and finish early next year that may produce some interesting
insights into three questions that exercise us here on urc:

Does road positioning help?
Are bus drivers less careful around cyclists?
Do helmets lead motorist to take less care?

Seems he's a keen cyclist and has published quite a bit on the
psychology between motorists and cyclists that I shall have to read. I
shall await the outcome of this study with interest.

http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/ViewGrant.asp...t=EP/D059593/1
Abstract:

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.).
Starts: 1 November 2005 Ends: 28 February 2006



--
Tony

"I did make a mistake once - I thought I'd made a mistake but I hadn't"
Anon

This looks to be a sensible approach to some of the basic problems that all
road users, especially cyclists, encounter. It is a pity that the study
being conducted isn't able to put a couple of hundred of the computerised
cycles on the road with a good range of cyclists of different types taking
part. It would then produce really good statistical results and be a very
positive input to the Motorist v Cyclist debate.

While I daily find I encounter rank dangerous drivers on the road who either
ignore cyclists or positively endanger them I also see an awful lot of
stupid and totally dangerous "cyclists" -- in fact I would say that there
are more "cyclists" endangering themselves ( and others) than there are
dangerous drivers. I don't know how this problem is tackled -- by a less
tolerant policing might be one answer!

I look forward to reading the final report!

--
Trevor A Panther
In South Yorkshire,
England, United Kingdom.
Remove PSANTISPAM to reply
"Tony Raven" wrote in message
...
Came across this study at the University of Bath that is due to start
soon and finish early next year that may produce some interesting
insights into three questions that exercise us here on urc:

Does road positioning help?
Are bus drivers less careful around cyclists?
Do helmets lead motorist to take less care?
snipsnip

Tony Raven wrote:
Seems he's a keen cyclist and has published quite a bit on the
psychology between motorists and cyclists that I shall have to read. I
shall await the outcome of this study with interest.

http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/ViewGrant.asp...t=EP/D059593/1

His website states that he plans to ride JOGLE over Easter 2004:
URL:http://www.drianwalker.com/cycling.html

Looking around the site he seems to have a good sense of humour, as
well. I particularly like the evil vegetables page:
URL:http://www.drianwalker.com/veg.html

--
Danny Colyer (my reply address is valid but checked infrequently)
URL:http://www.colyer.plus.com/danny/
Subscribe to PlusNet URL:http://www.colyer.plus.com/referral/
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." - Thomas Paine

"Danny Colyer" wrote:

Tony Raven wrote:

Seems he's a keen cyclist and has published quite a bit on
the psychology between motorists and cyclists that I shall
have to read. I shall await the outcome of this study with interest.

Looking around the site he seems to have a good sense of humour,
as well.

He used to post here fairly frequently.

http://groups.google.fr/groups?enc_a...coring=d&hl=fr

http://tinyurl.com/88ejg

James Thomson

James Thomson wrote:
"Danny Colyer" wrote:

Tony Raven wrote:

Seems he's a keen cyclist and has published quite a bit on
the psychology between motorists and cyclists that I shall
have to read. I shall await the outcome of this study with interest.

Looking around the site he seems to have a good sense of humour,
as well.

He used to post here fairly frequently.


And if he commutes up the hill to the University he's a better cyclist
than me by far!

--
Tony

"I did make a mistake once - I thought I'd made a mistake but I hadn't"
Anon

Danny Colyer wrote:

Looking around the site he seems to have a good sense of humour, as
well. I particularly like the evil vegetables page:
URL:http://www.drianwalker.com/veg.html

Google inserts adverts into this page - including one for a (the?)
pro-sprout website. It rather dilutes the message.

Colin McKenzie

On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 17:53:20 +0100, Danny Colyer
said in
:

Looking around the site he seems to have a good sense of humour, as
well.

As per: http://www.drianwalker.com/excuses.html

Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken

Response to Just zis Guy, you know?:
Looking around the site he seems to have a good sense of humour, as
well.

As per: http://www.drianwalker.com/excuses.html

LOL! How could I resist trying
"Click here if you are Tony O'Leary or Stevie Smith"
?


He's wrong about the vegetables, though, sprouts are lovely when well
steamed. Or have I been assimilated by the little green *******s?


--
Mark, UK

"Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his
time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether
popery was a man or a horse."

Mark McNeill wrote:

He's wrong about the vegetables, though, sprouts are lovely when well
steamed. Or have I been assimilated by the little green *******s?

When they haven't turned in to high rise slug hotels. Bah! and
BBaahh!!

...d

He's wrong about the vegetables, though, sprouts are lovely when well
steamed. Or have I been assimilated by the little green *******s?

There used to be all sorts of foods I didn't like. Then I moved away from
home and realised it was my mother's cooking I didn't like :-/

Father says the process was much the same for him, but in reverse. Keeps
him skinny I suppose.