Investigating Factors That Affect Right Turning Conflicts Between Bicyclists and Vehicles at Signalized Intersections

Abstract

<p>Due to the recognition of active transportation as a beneficial alternative to more traditional modes of transportation, there is increasing interest in designing infrastructure systems to promote the safe use of such forms of active transportation as bicycling. Crashes involving bicyclists and vehicles are less common than those between vehicles. As a result, alternative approaches of evaluating the safety effect of various infrastructure attributes, such as the use of surrogate safety measures, specifically traffic conflicts, could be considered. Most collisions between bicyclists and vehicles occur at intersections and of these, collisions between right turning vehicles and bicyclists form the majority. The main objective of this thesis was to investigate various intersection characteristics, including geometry, signal phasing, and bicycle infrastructure, to determine what attributes have a significant effect on right turning conflicts, how this may change with different conflict severity levels, and if microsimulation may be used as a supporting tool.</p>