Safety, cycling and sharing the road: qualitative research with cyclists and other road users

Qualitative research was carried out with cyclists, other road users and the parents of young cyclists to explore views on the positives and negatives of cycling, accounts of stress and risk on the road, views on the potential problems in interactions between cyclists and other vehicles, as well as strategies for dealing with and managing risk – including the use of safety gear.

This report presents findings from this research, carried out in June 2009 by Simon Christmas Ltd, the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) and SHM, as part of the wider research programme, Road User Safety and Cycling, being led by TRL on behalf of the Department for Transport.

This phase of work has been largely ‘descriptive’, aiming to provide a map of the diversity of safety-relevant motivations, attitudes, perceptions and behaviour among cyclists and other road users (ORUs).

Cycling sits at the intersection of a number of policy priorities – from road safety to health promotion and carbon reduction. We hope that the findings in this report will prove useful to a range of audiences; but our focus throughout the design, delivery and reporting of the research has been on issues of road safety. All of the distinctions we make, being based on qualitative work, would benefit from quantitative validation and scaling.