A new method for evaluating the effectiveness of micro-mobility protective equipment

Micromobility is one of the most important modes of transportation in urban environments and is widely used in modern cities. It refers to lightweight personal vehicles with a maximum speed of 45 km/h and a maximum weight of 350 kg. Effectively, micromobility safety represents one of the most critical concerns of vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as cyclists and employees of courier companies. Various measures and micromobility protective equipment (PE) have been used to enhance VRU safety and reduce traffic accidents involving VRUs. Therefore, evaluating the effectiveness of PE is very important to ensure that it can successfully prevent or reduce the risk of accidents and injuries. In this paper, we present a novel approach for evaluating the effectiveness of micromobility PE. The proposed data-driven method relies on data collected directly from micro-vehicles and micromobility users using various techniques, including web-based questionnaires, micro-vehicle sensor kits, and micromobility hazard detectors. However, synthetic data were generated and used to demonstrate the practicality of the proposed method. Additionally, an example for presenting the results of measuring the correlations and relationships among the collected data has been introduced and demonstrated so that micromobility users and other stakeholders can understand the effectiveness of each type of PE.