Personal Side Project in New York City (Brooklyn + Manhattan)
How does an expert bicyclist navigate and communicate with human drivers in New York City traffic?
Above: ActiveNotes, a novel electronic health record system that enables physicians to create structured and information-rich free-form health information within the same application and screen.
Bicyclists are among the most vulnerable people in an urban road environment. They ride fast, have little armor, and often lack cultural and infrastructural protection in cities within the United States.
Given this, how does an expert bicyclist navigate and communicate with human drivers in New York City traffic? And how might those communication patterns differ from a novice bicyclist?
Special thanks to my dear friend and collaborator Brian Marron (Trinity University, Ireland) for participating as the expert bicyclist, and to Sean Marron for letting me borrow his bike.
Method: For a first-person perspective I attached a camera to the handlebar of the chase bicycle. I rode the chase bicycle and followed Brian as he went on his daily commute to work. He lived in the city for over a year at that point, and thus was the “expert bicyclist”. My only prompt to Brian: “Just bicycle as you normally would.”
Over 1 hour of cycling footage was collected. We started in Brooklyn, made our way over the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan, and ended in Central Park.
Takeaways: In high-traffic areas and areas with multiple directions of movement, often there is not enough time for the bicyclist to make directed signals to drivers. Upon reviewing the collected footage, there were two scenarios when I saw direct signaling between the expert bicyclist and New York City drivers:
1. When the bicyclist was stopped at an intersection and needed to make a turn through oncoming traffic (e.g. making a left turn).
2. When the bicyclist broadcasted their intent to make a lane change by extending the respective arm. Sometimes the bicyclist would check their rear to confirm that the path is clear, but whether they were trying to make eye contact with drivers or only checking for the presence of a vehicle is unclear.
Summary: Signaling and eye contact with drivers is minimal, and it seems that expert bicyclists rely more on the motion and direction of the vehicle as a cue to proceed, rather than directed gesture and established eye contact.
Future studies involving first-person eye tracking glasses — glasses that could capture both the bicyclist’s field of vision and wherever their eyes are focused — could address that question. I could also follow more bicyclists instead of only one if I’d like to do more than generate potential research questions.
