Risk Analysis in Vehicle and Electric Scooter Interaction

The proliferation of shared micro-mobility services, including electric scooters (e-scooters), plays an important role in modern urban travel. Despite the growing popularity of e-scooters, their interactions with motor vehicles or pedestrians can lead to potential traffic accidents. In particular, the vehicle and e-scooter interaction (VEI) at intersections is of utmost importance to study, where the actions and intentions of e-scooter riders can vary greatly depending on the dynamic traffic situations. Moreover, due to the unique moving characteristics of e-scooters, drivers must maintain adequate awareness of the environment to mitigate unforeseen collision risks. In this paper, we aim to provide a novel risk analysis methodology to identify potential risky factors in the VEI process. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of various traffic situations are introduced to validate the functionality of the proposed system. The backtracking process algorithm (BPA) is also applied to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.