Traffic safety analysis for cyclists at roundabouts, a case study in Norrköping

Abstract: Cyclists as vulnerable road users are oftentimes unprotected with exposed human body, can fall easily and sustain serious injuries when encountered collisions, especially with motorists. At roundabouts, accident reduction rate for cyclists is rather uncertain or sometimes less favorable compared to other road users (e.g. motorists, pedestrians). This thesis focuses on advancing the understanding of traffic safety issues for cyclists at roundabouts by identifying concerns faced by cyclists and evaluating their designs to find out which configuration has high or higher safety level towards cyclists. The research approach adopted in this work includes a wide review of relevant literature on cyclist safety and roundabouts and the implementation of empirical research, the latter was carried out through a Case Study in Norrköping city by obtaining cyclist related accident data from Swedish Traffic Accident Data Acquisition database to identify roundabouts with high cyclist-related accidents in the city assisted with PTV Visum Safety tool and fetching traffic volume from city network model operated by Norrköping Municipality for each identified roundabout. The main findings from this research conclude that single-lane roundabouts with separated cycle paths in high traffic volume setting provide better or higher safety performance for cyclists compared to other roundabout configurations.