Bike safety is a growing concern for cities around the world because we all realize, polluting cars should be a thing of the past. Urban environments are packed with people, moving around constantly. If they all choose the car to move around, air pollution and the associated health hazards become a real problem. That is why more and more city governments choose to make their city more bike-friendly. To do so they use various research tools, to find the best, and also most cost-effective changes in road infrastructure to make cyclists feel comfortable, making them leave their polluting noisy cars at home, and picking their bike for their daily commute.
At OpenEye we assist in this research, by giving insights on where cyclists look, what they miss, what stresses them, and what road situations are least dangerous. With the city of Amsterdam and road construction company BAM, we are developing bike safety indices, which can be measured by our OpenEye glasses. We measure gaze direction, but also GPS location, galvanic skin response, heart rate variability, noise levels, and movement of the steering wheel. After we recorded a route, we further process the recorded eye-tracking videos with computer vision models.
We index the amount of other traffic surrounding the biker, road obstacles, and any visual information that gives insight into the safety of the road, and possible ways to make the road safer and more comfortable for cyclists. With our measurements and infrastructure improvements, cycling comfort is increased, and more cars are replaced by bikes. This helps cities become greener and ready for the future.
