Abstract
Around 70% of bicycle accidents in Japan occur at intersections. At signalized intersections, 60% of bicycle accidents are crashes with left or right turn vehicles. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) and the National Police Agency (NPA) published “Guideline for creating a safe and comfortable bicycle friendly environment” on November 29th, 2012. This guideline mentioned basic strategy of the layout of intersections to consider the prevention of crashes of cycling on carriage way and vehicles turning left. In order to promote bicycle friendly streets, it becomes important to design intersections especially safe for the bicycles to left-turning vehicles in Japan. The aim of this study is to evaluate the bicycle safety treatments for left-turning vehicles at signalized intersections by employing the experiments in virtual reality of driving and cycling simulator. Comparing with junction layouts; segregation policy and mixture policy from viewpoints of vehicle and bicycle behavior, safety sense, and TTC, it is found that the mixture policy is safer but has disadvantage for keeping cyclists' safety sense to the vehicles.
