Bicyclists' braking profile on typical urban road pavements

Abstract

This study examines the bicyclists' braking profile on four typical pavement types in the urban road environment: asphalt, concrete plate, concrete bricks and thermoplastic material. The experiment took place in the city of Volos, Greece, in a pedestrian area provided with a bikeway across the port, under good weather conditions. Five volunteer bicyclists, men and women of different physical weight took part in the experiment, riding a brand new city bike. The experiment was conducted with the use of state of the art equipment: VBOX (Racelogic, UK) that could trace the bicyclists' movement and collect data of position, speed etc using GPS signal. Each participant accelerated the bike on 15km/hr or 20km/hr, kept the speed steady riding the bike in straight line and then applied the brakes with maximum force until the bike stops. This test was revised for each pavement type. After the data analysis, we estimated the braking time and distance for each pavement type for the two speed levels according to the bicyclists' weight. Finally, we concluded that the shortest braking distance was noticed on the pavement made from asphalt. Furthermore, we concluded that a 5km/hr rise of bicyclists' speed resulted to a much longer braking distance.