Abstract
The investigations on the effectiveness of the turn signal in motorcyclists understanding of motorists’ potential intentions in potentially dangerous car–motorcycle interactions and on the relationships among some variables that could influence the perception of rear and front turn signal status are examined in this paper. The investigations have been based on data pooled from the answers of a survey of 136 motorcycle riders, with special regards to the correct detection of turning indicators. Experimental videos have been realized during in-situ simulations, both in urban and suburban areas, recording vehicular interactions in three-leg road intersections, able to potentially generate crash risks, through a 360-camera mounted on a motorcyclist’s helmet. The blinkers detection rate has been combined with other factors related to motorcyclist’s characteristics and test context (e.g., age, gender, location of the test site, presence of a car behind tester vehicles and if the motorcyclist are also habitual car or bicycle drivers) in a stepwise logistic regression that modelled the odds of detecting the turn signal turned on as a function of significant factors. Within the limits of the proposed methodology, the results highlight the low percentage of correct sighting of the turn indicators and confirm the existence of a relation between the detection of the turn indicators aspect and some of the variables considered (e.g., age, being habitual cyclist or car driver and the presence of a car occluding the views), suggesting the opportunity to further investigate the phenomenon through the use of ad-hoc simulations, in order to highlight connections among the factors that can influence the perception of turning indicators in potentially dangerous contexts for cars and motorcycles.
Highlights
Almost half of all fatalities of road accidents in the world involve users with the lowest level of protection
The GoPro Hero is the camera that was mounted on the side of the head of the car driver to record, for future insights, the turning signal of the Sensors 2019, 19
We evaluated the effectiveness of cars’ turn signals and explored the possible determinants of the correct detection of their status by motorcyclists in urban and sub-urban road environments
Summary
Almost half of all fatalities of road accidents in the world involve users with the lowest level of protection (i.e., motorcyclists, pedestrians, and cyclists). Motorcyclists represent 10% of road deaths in Europe, 20% in America, and 34% in Asian states [1]. In Europe, according to stats [2,3], eleven motorbike drivers or passengers are killed per 100,000 registered motorcycles. The share of motorcycle riders’ fatalities among all road deaths differs throughout the Europe states, from 5% in the Balkan states to 35% in Greece. From 2011 to 2016 the amount of accidents occurrence and motorcyclists killed or injured in Italy is slightly diminished, with the number of deaths contracting from 205,747 to 175,792 [4]. The number of fatalities has kept on following a descending pattern
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