Analysis of e-scooters’ trajectories in real driving environments

Recently there has been an increase in the adoption of electric scooter (e-scooter) in Italian cities, both as a sharing service and as an owned vehicle. This generated several safety issues, since e-scooters have to share the road infrastructure with cars. In the scientific literature a gap exists in a deep understanding of e-scooter drivers’ behavior and of their interaction with roads and other vehicles; nevertheless, it can represent the basis for the development of simulation models to be adopted for safety checks and planning purposes. The present study deals with the analysis of trajectories of e-scooters in real driving environments. An experimental phase was conducted during May-July 2023 adopting On Board Units (OBU) characterized by a sampling frequency of 1 Hz and placed on e-scooters and cars. The tracking allows to derive positions, speeds and accelerations profiles together with kinematic variables’ distributions. Moreover, in case of overtaking, the lateral distance between the following and the leading vehicle was computed.