Updated results are shown in this second article dealing with the death of a retired professor who was struck and killed while cycling across Gainsborough Road in London, Ontario, Canada. The collision occurred on September 5th and a safety study of the site was commenced by Gorski Consulting on September 13, 2020. Descriptions of the site can be obtained from examining the initial article (“Death of Cycling Professor Leads To Study of Collision Site Safety”) posted on this Gorski Consulting website on September 24th.
The first article provided results from the analysis of multiple video cameras that were posted along Gainsborough Road and at the intersection of the cycling path. Over two hours of videotape was obtained and the initial analysis covered the first 20 minutes of observations. Videotaping began shortly after 1430 hours however the full compliment of cameras was not assembled until approximately 1453 hours and this is when the analysis began. Throughout the first 20 minutes it was observed that a large number of vehicles were entering an exiting two driveways located just west of the cycling path and on the north side of Gainsborough Road. Since the video cameras were positioned to the west of the cycling path this meant that these turning vehicles were captured and were included as part of the total travel volume. The figure below shows a view of the site and the location of the two driveways in comparison to the location of the cameras and the cycling path.
The orange arrows show the path of vehicles entering the west driveway, attending a commercial activity, exiting via the east driveway and making a left turn to travel eastbound on Gainsborough Road. About one third of all eastbound vehicles were observed to perform this action in the first 20 minutes of documentation.
Frame from a video camera placed at 220 metres west of the cycling path. A white SUV is seen pulling out of the east driveway from which many left-turning vehicles were observed. The cycling path is located approximately where the grey vehicle is positioned in the background.
In the first 20 minutes 118 eastbound vehicles were documented, however 42 vehicles, or almost one third, came from entering onto Gainsborough from the noted driveways.
The new data provides an additional 20 minutes of observations taken from 20 to 40 minutes of the video project. In this additional 20 minutes, 101 eastbound vehicles were documented. However, 21 of those vehicles came from entering onto Gainsborough Road from the previously noted driveways. So this is a large drop in the number of these turning vehicles and it may have affected the speed results shown below.
The table below shows the average speed of all eastbound vehicles travelling straight through the site along four distance intervals. These distance intervals were discussed in the initial article however, to reiterate, each interval is 50 metres in length commencing from 200 metres west of the cycling path and continuing to the west edge of the path (Zero). All the vehicles making turns into the noted driveways are removed from this table. However these average speeds do not exclude the large number of vehicles whose travel was interfered with, by vehicles ahead and other factors.
The table below shows the adjusted results once interference is taken into account such that only vehicles with a free distance ahead are included. As mentioned in the earlier article, if a vehicle ahead was within 5 seconds the following vehicle was viewed as being interfered and was removed from the table below.
Comparing the two tables it can be seen that average speeds in the “20 to 40 Minutes” portion of the observations were higher than those in the first 20 minutes of observations. This is likely due to the reduced number of vehicles making left turns and thus the reduction in interference in the free flow of traffic. This is particularly notable in the second table where, out of 118 vehicles, only 27 vehicles were found with a freedom to pass through the site without interference. Yet in the second 20 minutes only 101 vehicles however 37 vehicles were found with the same freedom from interference.
Further differences are shown in the number of vehicles travelling over 80 km/h. In the first 20 minutes there was only one observation, out of the 27, where a vehicle travelled over 80 km/h, or about 3.7 %. In contrast in the second 20 minutes 8 of the 37 vehicles were observed to be travelling over 80 km/h, or about 21.6 %. This appears to be a large difference although these are still very small numbers of observations.
Thus the presence of the commercial activity that caused many vehicles to drive in and out of the nearby driveways may have contributed to lowering the average speed of vehicles. This possibility may be developed further as we continue to analyze the videotape through the full two hours.
After 40 minutes of observations we can now show a table of the number of pedestrians and cyclists using the multi-use path. This number is small as noted in the table below.
As can be seen the numbers of cyclists and pedestrians using the path and crossing Gainsborough Road is rather small in comparison to the number of motor vehicles travelling on Gainsborough. These numbers will increase as more videotape is analyzed.
The number of cyclists riding along Gainsborough road was also added to the above table for interest.
Further discussions will be included in future articles as we continue with the analysis of the Gainsborough Site observations.
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