Department of Computational Modeling and Simulation Engineering, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Old Dominion University, VA 23529, USA.
Accid Anal Prev. 2021 Mar;151:105954. doi: 10.1016/j.aap.2020.105954. Epub 2020 Dec 25.
The emergence of shared electric scooter (E-Scooter) systems offers a new micro-mobility mode in many urban areas worldwide. These systems have rapidly attracted numerous trips on various types of facilities such as sidewalks and bike lanes. After their burst of popularity, there are also growing safety concerns about E-Scooter riding. Consequently, a few cities have banned or temporarily suspended E-Scooters as severe crashes occurred. As an emerging micro-mobility mode, its safety performance is significantly understudied as compared to other travel modes such as cars and bicycles. The lack of crash records further prevents it from understanding the underlying mechanisms that drive the occurrences of E-Scooter crashes. The overarching goal of this paper is to probe the safety risk when riding E-Scooters. Specifically, it aims to study the interactions between e-scooter riding and the environment settings through naturalistic riding experiments. Rather than focusing on the analysis of individual riders' heterogeneous behavior (e.g., swinging, hard braking, etc.) and rider characteristics (e.g., age, gender, etc.), the naturalistic riding study examines the riding process in different riding circumstances. A mobile sensing system has been developed to collect data for quantifying the surrogate safety metrics in terms of experienced vibrations, speed changes, and proximity to surrounding objects. The results from naturalistic riding experiments show that E-Scooters can experience notable impacts from different riding facilities. Specifically, compared to bicycle riding, more severe vibration events were associated with E-Scooter riding, regardless of the pavement types. Riding on concrete pavements was found to experience a multiple times higher frequency of vibration events when compared to riding on asphalt pavements of the same length. Riding on both sidewalks and vehicle lanes can both encounter high-frequency close contacts in terms of proximity with other objects. These experimental results suggest that E-Scooters are subject to increased safety challenges due to the increased vibrations, speed variations, and constrained riding environments.
共享电动滑板车 (E-Scooter) 系统的出现为全球许多城市提供了一种新的微移动模式。这些系统迅速吸引了许多人在各种设施上出行，如人行道和自行车道。在它们迅速普及之后，也出现了越来越多的关于骑 E-Scooter 的安全问题。因此，一些城市已经禁止或暂时暂停使用 E-Scooter，因为发生了严重的撞车事故。作为一种新兴的微移动模式，与汽车和自行车等其他出行方式相比，其安全性能的研究还远远不够。缺乏撞车记录也进一步阻碍了人们了解导致 E-Scooter 撞车事故发生的潜在机制。本文的总体目标是探究骑 E-Scooter 的安全风险。具体来说，它旨在通过自然骑行实验研究 E-Scooter 骑行与环境设置之间的相互作用。自然骑行研究不是关注个体骑手的异质性行为（如摆动、急刹车等）和骑手特征（如年龄、性别等）的分析，而是研究不同骑行环境下的骑行过程。已经开发了一种移动感应系统来收集数据，以量化振动、速度变化和与周围物体接近度等替代安全指标。自然骑行实验的结果表明，E-Scooter 会受到不同骑行设施的显著影响。具体来说，与骑自行车相比，无论路面类型如何，E-Scooter 骑行都会经历更严重的振动事件。与相同长度的沥青路面相比，在混凝土路面上骑行时，振动事件的频率要高出数倍。在人行道和车道上骑行时，都可能会与其他物体发生高频近距离接触。这些实验结果表明，由于振动增加、速度变化和受限的骑行环境，E-Scooter 面临更大的安全挑战。
