A jughandle design will virtually eliminate single bicycle crashes at a railway crossing

Abstract

IntroductionBicycling provides many positive outcomes at individual- and population-levels, from increased physical activity to reduced congestion. One of the main barriers to increased levels of bicycling is safety and injury risk from motor vehicles and from single-bicycle crashes. One known hazard is bicycle crashes at rail crossings where the bicycle wheel is caught in the flangeway causing loss of control. MethodsThis study evaluates two realignments, or “jughandle” designs to increase the angle of a skewed crossing in an urban environment. Using continuous video analysis over two 2-month periods, this is the first empirical analysis of safety performance of this infrastructure. ResultsThe realignment reduced crash risk by 98% (C.I. 86.3%–99.7%), from 4.0 to 0.1 crashes per 1000 crossings (or 53 crashes before to 1 crash after). Bicycling across at more than 30° eliminates almost all risk by reducing the severity of the crash. There were 19 crashes with minor injury and one was severe out of 32 observed crashes before the jughandle design, while only one non-injury crash was observed after the treatment. More than 90% of riders complied with the new design, following the desired path. ConclusionThe study shows that the “jughandle” realignment of bicycle crossings at the railway can virtually eliminate the risk of single bicycle crashes. Most of the riders complied with the realigned path by the use of low-cost implementation of pavement marking. However, we can expect better compliance rate and, subsequently, lower crash rate by the application of prominent mitigation techniques such as bollards and surface treatment.