SimRa: Using Crowdsourcing to Identify Near Miss Hotspots in Bicycle Traffic

TL;DR

SimRa is a crowdsourcing platform that collects bicycle route and near miss incident data via smartphones to identify and score dangerous hotspots, aiding city planners in improving cycling safety.

Contribution

This paper introduces SimRa, a novel smartphone-based crowdsourcing system for mapping bicycle near misses and hotspots, with a new scoring model for safety assessment.

Findings

Collected extensive bicycle route data from users.

Identified and scored near miss hotspots.

Provided actionable insights for urban safety improvements.

Abstract

An increased modal share of bicycle traffic is a key mechanism to reduce emissions and solve traffic-related problems. However, a lack of (perceived) safety keeps people from using their bikes more frequently. To improve safety in bicycle traffic, city planners need an overview of accidents, near miss incidents, and bike routes. Such information, however, is currently not available. In this paper, we describe SimRa, a platform for collecting data on bicycle routes and near miss incidents using smartphone-based crowdsourcing. We also describe how we identify dangerous near miss hotspots based on the collected data and propose a scoring model.