Citation

Herrera N, Parr SA, Wolshon B. Transp. Res. Interdiscip. Persp. 2020; 6: e100173.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.trip.2020.100173

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The long and tragic history of bicycle/vehicle collisions has led to calls for legislative action to provide greater safety for bicyclists on the roadways. In the United States, "Three-foot bicycle passing laws," are among the most common. In general, these laws require motor vehicles overtaking or passing bicyclists to do so by providing a minimum of 3 ft of lateral separation. The goal of this paper was to investigate how these laws substantively affect driver behavior. In this paper, a driving simulator was used to quantify the overtaking behavior, in terms of lateral overtaking distance and speed, of drivers in the vicinity of bicyclists. Study participants included drivers both aware and unaware of these laws. The research also examined the behavior of participants under varying traffic conditions. The results showed a tendency of drivers to provide more than the three-foot minimum requirement. This was true for both sets of "aware" and "unaware" drivers. Overall, this research suggests that drivers in the simulated environment tended to behave similarly regardless of prior knowledge of the three-foot law requirements. Materially, the research failed to identify a significant distinction between the two groups of participants under a range of traffic conditions.

Language: en

Keywords

Bicycle safety; Driving simulator; Lateral overtaking distance; Overtaking speed; Three-foot passing laws