Environmental factors associated with perceived cycling safety of intersections, road segments and home-to-school routes of adolescents in Flanders
Cycling is with a share of 30 % the most commonly used transport mode for adolescents’ home-to-school travel in Flanders. However, the number of cycling accidents has been increasing over the last years. To complement these often unrepresentative objective data, and to give a voice to adolescents in mobility policy, we collected perceived cycling safety data of adolescents, using our online platform the Bike Barometer (https://fietsbarometer.ugent.be/home). Via this platform, adolescents evaluate roads and intersections along their home-to-school route in terms of cycling safety, by giving a s... Mehr ...
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Dokumenttyp: | conference |
Erscheinungsdatum: | 2021 |
Schlagwörter: | Earth and Environmental Sciences / perceived cycling safety / adolescents / intersections / road segments / routes |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Permalink: | https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27474672 |
Datenquelle: | BASE; Originalkatalog |
Powered By: | BASE |
Link(s) : | https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8740518 |
Cycling is with a share of 30 % the most commonly used transport mode for adolescents’ home-to-school travel in Flanders. However, the number of cycling accidents has been increasing over the last years. To complement these often unrepresentative objective data, and to give a voice to adolescents in mobility policy, we collected perceived cycling safety data of adolescents, using our online platform the Bike Barometer (https://fietsbarometer.ugent.be/home). Via this platform, adolescents evaluate roads and intersections along their home-to-school route in terms of cycling safety, by giving a score from 0 (unsafe) to 10 (safe), and by providing reasons for their safety feeling. 1916 adolescents (mean = 15.9 years, SD = 1.7 years) from 35 schools in Flanders participated between September 2020 and April 2021. We investigated the association of adolescents’ perceptions with the feeling of safety along intersections, segments and their complete home-to-school routes using multilevel linear regression analyses. Our first results showed that perceived safety at intersections was mainly related with adolescents’ perceptions of safety to cross the intersection, safety of the cycling infrastructure, traffic volume and how often they were cut off their path while cycling. For segments, perceived safety was most associated with adolescents’ perception of the distance at which cars drove next to them, safety of the cycling infrastructure, and traffic volume. At the level of the complete routes, adolescents’ overall safety feeling was higher when they consciously chose their route because the cycling infrastructure was safer, there was less traffic, or the route was the most beautiful one. Besides these subjective aspects, we will investigate the effect of objective factors, such as infrastructure type and speed limits, on perceived cycling safety. These outcomes provide useful information for policymakers who want to adjust intersections and segments so that people feel safe when cycling along them.