TRCLC 15-1

Effect of Cycling Skills on Bicycle Safety and Comfort Associated with Bicycle Infrastructure and Environment

PIs: Jun-Seok Oh, Kapseong Ro and Valerian Kwigizile (Western Michigan University)

The ultimate goal of this research is developing a method to determine the bike-ability of bicycle environment in terms of safety and comfort using an Instrumented Probe Bicycle (IPB). However, there are differences in the IPB measurements by the level of cycling skills. Therefore, there are needs for investigating the effect of different level of cycling skills on bicycle safety and comfort associated with bicycle infrastructure and environment by means of IPB in determining the bike-ability.

An instrumented probe bicycle will be designed and constructed to collect necessary motion critical data of a human-bicycle dynamic system. The level of cycling skills will be determined based on physical characteristics and comprehensive surveys of participating riders, and the correlation between the level of cycling skills and bicycle safety and comfort will be investigated associated with bicycle infrastructure and environment. A tangible analytical model of bicycle dynamics will be developed based on necessary physical principles, and a numerical simulation model will be constructed using the bicycle data specific to the IPB. This research will also develop an instrumentation system for the IPB including a set of design guidelines for the future standalone unit for IPB applications. A structured survey based assessment method will be developed not only to differentiate the level of cycling skills but also the perceptions on bicycle safety and comfort based on trial rides on given bicycle infrastructure. The survey based data will then be compared to the system dynamic data from IPB, and the effect cycling skills on the perceptions on bicycle safety and comfort will be studied.

 

Final Report