Assessing the Perceived Safety of Cyclists with Virtual Reality

The recent advancement of VR technology has opened the door for lower-cost and lower-risk ways to study bicyclists’ and pedestrians’ perceptions of safety and acceptance of safety technology. This research joins expertise in transportation infrastructure design, traveler behavior, intelligent transportation systems, human-centered design, immersive virtual environments, and user interaction with the built environment to tackle improving transportation infrastructure and technology for non-motorized travelers. If CSUTC wants to implement the developed technology at a larger scale, the research team will seek opportunities with current vendors that provide pedestrian and cyclist safety analytics to transfer the developed technology. A major outcome of this project is a report of the proposed framework for identifying and quantifying non-motorized travelers’ perception of safety and ultimately identifying infrastructure design and technology solutions that better accommodate these travelers’ needs for smooth technology transfer. This report will be made available through the final report to MTI for broad dissemination. Upon receiving approval from MTI, the results of this project will be made available at the National Center for Transportation Green Technologies and Education (TransGET) at CSULB. The developed system and findings from this study will be widely publicized on a routine basis to the transportation and construction communities through various conference presentations and journal papers. The target conference is the Transportation Research Board (TRB) by the August 2024 deadline and a journal paper will be submitted to the Elsevier Journal of Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies.