Impact of E-Scooters on Pedestrian Safety: A Field Study Using Pedestrian Crowd-Sensing release_hrldu6r6kbbw5e7apmmhsy4mv4

by Anindya Maiti, Nisha Vinayaga-Sureshkanth, Murtuza Jadliwala, Raveen Wijewickrama, Greg P. Griffin

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2020  

Abstract

The popularity and proliferation of electric scooters (e-scooters) as a micromobility solution in our cities and urban communities has been rapidly rising. Rent-by-the-minute pricing and a healthy competition between micromobility service providers is also benefiting riders with low trip costs. However, an unprepared urban infrastructure, combined with uncertain operation policies and poor regulation enforcement, has resulted in e-scooter riders encroaching public spaces meant for pedestrians, thus causing significant safety concerns both for themselves and the pedestrians. As a consequence, it has become critical to understand the current state of pedestrian safety in our urban communities vis-à-vis e-scooter services, identify factors that impact pedestrian safety due to such services, and determine how to support pedestrian safety going forward. Unfortunately, to date there have been no realistic, data-driven efforts within the research community that address these issues. In this work, we conduct a field study to empirically investigate and characterize new safety issues that arise due to the introduction of e-scooter services, from the pedestrians' perspective. By crowd-sensing real-time encounter data between e-scooters and pedestrian participants on two urban university campuses over a three-month period, we uncover encounter statistics and mobility trends that could identify potentially unsafe spatio-temporal zones for pedestrians. This first-of-its-kind work also provides a blueprint on how crowd-sensed micromobility data can enable similar safety-related studies in other urban communities.
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Type  article
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Date   2020-05-12
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Language   en ?
arXiv  1908.05846v3
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