Reliability of VANET Bicycle Safety Applications in Malicious Environments

This paper presents a bicycle safety application that aims to reduce accidents due to the so-called Right Hook Conflict, where a right-turning vehicle causes a crash with an adjacent bicycle. It is based on the same technologies introduced for accident avoidance for motor vehicles in the context of connected vehicles. The bicycle safety application uses information that is exchanged in periodic beacon messages emitted by all vehicles, including bicycles. This wireless vehicle-to-vehicle communication is however vulnerable to malicious jamming attacks. A bicycle safety application algorithm is presented that is capable of mitigating against such attacks, as well as message loss due to natural phenomena. The algorithm was analyzed in terms of accuracy and application reliability. Its effectiveness was evaluated based on real-world field experiments using commercial equipment installed in the vehicles and bicycle.