Imagine tourists arriving in a new city and wanting to see the sights. They decide to rent an e-bike to get around faster. They are unfamiliar with their surroundings and don’t know the potential spots for danger on certain streets.
Then, imagine a few longtime residents of the same city. They own e-bikes and ride around frequently. They know the spots to avoid and the roads that are safer to travel.
Would there be any difference in the number of crashes between the two populations, or a difference in the types of injuries they suffer if they’re involved in an accident? How would those compare to someone riding a conventional bicycle?
That is part of what Christopher Cherry is hoping to discover in one of his latest research projects, “Investigating safety and risk disparity between personally owned and shared micromobility modes.”
“If there’s a difference in safety, between shared or personally owned, then what’s driving that safety? Is it the that vehicles are safer? Is it that the behaviors are safer,” said Cherry, the associate department head of undergraduate studies and a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “We may not know after this project either, but we’ll at least have a framework to think about it and have some interesting areas to explore.”
Uncovering Accident Patterns
Given the surge in the use of e-bikes and e-scooters, safety implications have become a major concern for city officials, micromobility companies, and riders.
Cherry, and his co-principal investigator Bruce Appleyard of San Diego State, have three main goals for their project, which is funded by the Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety:
- Compare crashes involving shared e-bikes and bicycles.
- Understanding how safety trends for personally owned e-bikes are changing.
- Identify the differences in safety between personally owned and shared e-scooters.
Cherry and Appleyard will be trying to uncover patterns, risk factors, and disparities in micromobility-related accidents by analyzing existing and emerging data and collaborating with industry partners to conduct surveys.
“From there, we can talk about crash histories and try to get some of the more qualitative assessment of safety in that regard,” Cherry said. “The other part of it is really trying to understand what sort of data sets are out there related to safety. For example, there are new codes in the health data sets. Emergency department data sets have new codes that exist that can help understand whether it’s a scooter or an e-bike or a conventional bike.”
Through their work, Cherry and Appleyard hope to provide evidence to inform policies and improve infrastructure to enhance overall transportation safety. They want to inform policymakers, practitioners, and the public on strategies to mitigate safety risks associated with the proliferation of micromobility modes in urban environments.
The results may lead to enhanced rider education, modified infrastructure design, or the implementation of speed management strategies if shared e-bikes are more prone to certain crashes, such as collisions at higher speeds or in congested urban areas.
Cherry hopes this project is just the start of assessing safety risks and how to blend micromobility modes into the transportation system. More research will be needed to explore all the issues related to the topic and try to minimize serious injuries.
“Where do e-bikes and e-scooters belong on our streets? Do they belong on our greenways or other shared use paths, mixed with pedestrians?” Cherry said. “Basically, there’s a lot of policy questions about how these different types of modes of transportation fit into the transportation system that includes understanding the safety of the vehicles themselves and the behaviors of riders and drivers.”
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey (865-974-0683, rpotkey@utk.edu)