Assessing the overtaking lateral distance between motor vehicles and bicycles: influence on energy consumption and road safety

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to analyse the impacts of the overtaking lateral dis-tance between a bicycle and a motor vehicle (MV) on road safety and energy consump-tion at two-lane urban roads. An on-board sensor platform was installed on a probe bi-cycle to measure the overtaking lateral distance and dynamic data. The Bicycle Specific Power (BSP) methodology was used to estimate human required power to ride a bicy-cle while Vehicle Specific Power (VSP) was used for MVs. The results showed that 50% of overtaking lateral distance were lower than 0.5m in the peak hours. The BSP and VSP analyses for different values of overtaking lateral distance did not result in any relationship between variables. There was a good fit (R2 >0.67) between traffic volumes and overtaking lateral distance in the peak hours. On average, the MVs energy con-sumption in the afternoon was 92% higher than the morning peak periods.