Enhancing bicycle safety through immersive experiences using virtual reality technologies

Abstract

A bicycle is a fundamental means of transportation for citizens in a modern urban city. However, many traffic accidents have caused by bicycle riding. In this study, our aim is to make people learn desirable riding manners of a bicycle, and to improve their skills towards safer riding for bicycle riders by using a bicycle riding training systems based on virtual reality technologies. The system takes into account the following four issues. The first issue is improving the effectiveness of bicycle riding training by improving the reality of the training system. The second issue is the improvement of the awareness of bicycle riding safety by experiencing traffic accidents in the virtual space. The third issue is to introduce a proper feedback system to a user of the training system. The fourth issue is to introduce gamification-based rewards in the training system. We have developed a prototype system to validate our approach, and present some results from user studies to investigate the feasibility of the prototype training system.