Research published in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention today (Thursday 11 April 2019) shows that marked on-road bicycle lanes and parked cars reduce the distance that motorists provide when passing cyclists.

In the largest study of its kind in the world, data was collected on 60 cyclists in Melbourne who rode their bicycles with a custom device (the ‘MetreBox’) installed to quantify the distance that motor vehicle drivers provide when passing cyclists. More than 18,000 vehicle passing events from 422 trips were recorded.

One in every 17 passing events (n=1085) came within one metre of the travelling cyclist and, alarmingly, 124 passing events came within less than 60cm. In higher speed zones, greater than 60 km/h, roughly one in every three (n=293) passing events was a ‘close’ pass (<150cm).

There were approximately 1.7 passing events of less than 100cm for every 10km travelled.