How Cyclists Perceive Cycling Infrastructure: Findings from a Cycling Simulator Study
- David Friel
- Aug 6
- 8 min read
Imagine yourself sitting on a bike riding along the city and suddenly find yourself again at the intersection displayed in the picture above. What would you think? What would you do? And how would you feel?
This is basically what my colleagues and I investigated in a three-year-study at TU Berlin. We invited participants to ride through various intersection designs using a cycling simulator and conducted interviews to understand how they felt while riding.
Who I am? I’m David Friel, research associate at the chair of Integrated Transport Planning at TU Berlin, currently writing my PhD about comprehensible cycling infrastructure. Why does this topic matter? You’ll find out in this blog post.
Investigating Perceived Safety
Lots of studies have already been carried out to investigate so-called “objective safety” for cyclists at different intersection designs – investigating crash numbers, conflict rates or injury costs. But even the safest intersection in terms of objective safety can still feel dangerous as you ride through it on a bike. And if you feel threatened, you won’t ride there again. Or you may even stop cycling at all. Thus, perceived safety might be much more important than objective safety for the goal of fostering cycling. And as there has been hardly any research about the topic, my colleagues and I wanted to find out how safe cyclists feel at different intersection designs and which design elements increase perceived safety for cyclists.
We did this using a bicycle simulator with four screens surrounding a bike. Sitting on the bike, participants were able to navigate through a virtual scene by just using a bike as you would do normally: steer, pedal, brake.
As mentioned, there has been hardly any research concerning perceived safety when we started. Thus, we decided to use a qualitative, explorative and iterative approach: First, we conducted interviews to understand who we are talking with. Afterwards, we let participants ride through some intersections, conducted interviews about their perceptions, analyzed these interviews and modified the intersection designs. Then, we again let participants ride through these modified intersection designs, conducted interviews and analyzed these interviews. If you’re further interested in the research methods, sample, intersection designs and so on, you’ll find all this in Friel et al. (2023) or Friel & Wachholz (in press) This blog post will focus on the results and open questions remaining.
What we found out
First of all, we used data from the narrative interviews that we conducted first to assign participants to a cyclist typology. Although there’s a lot more fancy and interesting details, the relevant piece of information is: we had a heterogeneous sample (n=61) of varying ages (19 to 78), gender (36 female), and riding styles according to the cyclist typologies by Leben (2016) and Geller (2009).
The fear of being run over by cars
In the first simulator study, we analyzed all statements to get a general safety assessment for each intersection design. Not very surprisingly, some intersections were described as more dangerous than others with one main reason: fear of car traffic. Thus, whenever cyclists were more separated from cars, respondents told us they felt safer than on other intersection designs, where they had to interact with cars.
For example, we had a Protected Intersection design with curbs between car and cycling facilities. Due to this separation, one respondent stated: “the space here: it's safe, it's physically reserved for me, [...] you can't take it away from me.“ In turn, at the intersection shown at the top of the page, infrastructure for cars and bikes is intertwined. Accordingly, cyclists have to interact with cars no matter if they want to turn right, go straight or turn left. Thus, there were lots of statements expressing fear. In one case, this even resulted in this statement: “I refuse to cycle here. I'd rather say: Here's 40 Euros, I'll take the sidewalk.“
Of course, respondents’ statements differed from each other, with some respondents emphasizing this aspect, while for others it was less important. However, when we try to sum it up in one sentence: Cyclists are afraid of being run over by cars.
Perceived safety is just one part
As we conducted qualitative and explorative research, we asked open questions like described in the beginning, like “how did you feel?” instead of “how safe did you feel?”. Therefore, we did not only get statements referring to perceived safety. For example, we had this roundabout design in our study:
Would you know who has right of way in this situation? Many participants didn’t and were therefore confused. Moreover, we had lots of statements how nice it was to not having to wait for traffic lights but to “be in the flow”. We subsumed statements like these in the categories comprehensibility and comfort. Thus, we concluded, there seem to be three main criteria to assess cycling infrastructure: perceived safety, comfort, and comprehensibility.
How these criteria are linked
In the first simulator study, we had heard about a lot of problems concerning the intersection designs. Thus, for the second simulator study, we modified the intersection designs to get rid of as many problems as possible. Of course, this did not result in perfectly-designed solutions. Instead, we just had new problems. For example, we tried to solve comprehensibility issues by adding markings, traffic lights, and additional sign posts like displayed in the following figure:
But instead of creating easy-to-understand infrastructure, we received complaints about the overwhelming number of simultaneously presented information.
We have plenty of findings like this and summing up all these results takes a whole paper (Friel & Wachholz, in press). Therefore, in this blog post, I focus on one key conclusion we draw. I’ll illustrate it using the modified roundabout design as tested in the last study phase:
Although we had implemented shark teeth markings and raised up the cycle lane, some participants still had trouble how priority rules would apply when they approached this location. This unclear priority rule influences – of course – comprehensibility. In this case, this lack of comprehensibility, in turn, reduced participants’ perceived safety: they didn’t know if they had right of way and therefore, they were afraid of being hit by the approaching car. But there were other cases, in which comprehensibility had an impact on comfort as well. Thus, we concluded that design elements can influence comprehensibility, which in turn can have an impact on cyclists’ comfort and safety perception. Furthermore, when we asked the participants to give an overall rating for the roundabout, comfort and safety were used in two completely different argumentation lines. Some respondents told us that they were aware of some safety issues but also really liked how the roundabout created a comfortable, fluid and time-saving cycling experience. These respondents gave more weight to the increased comfort than to the reduced safety. Others, in turn, emphasized safety in their argumentation: "As a cyclist […] you have the luxury of getting through it very quick. […] But it's a benefit at the expense of safety.” Thus, there seems to be an individual trade-off between comfort and safety: some prefer safety over comfort, others weight comfort over safety.
Thus, our preliminary theory about infrastructure design elements and their influence on cyclists’ perceptions states: Design elements can influence comprehensibility, comfort, and safety. Comprehensibility can influence safety and comfort, which in turn are moderated by an individual trade-off:
Open questions
However, as it is a preliminary theory, there are some open questions that remain.
For example, the trade-off is quite unclear yet as we don’t know who responds how and why. In the best case, we can further analyze data and find a typology that explains why someone prefers safety and someone else prefers comfort.
Furthermore, the terms we used – safety, comfort, comprehensibility – are very vague. The terms were developed inductively during the coding process. There already are numerous studies using similar terms (see e.g. Stülpnagel & Binning, 2022, Winters et al., 2012 for safety, Abadi & Hurwitz, 2018, Fitch et al, 2022 for comfort, Müggenburg et al, 2022, Monsere et al., 2015 for comprehensibility). But all terms are inconsistently used and vaguely defined (e.g. for the term comprehensibility, see Friel, 2025). Moreover, other studies found other key categories to describe cyclists’ perception (see Berghöfer & Vollrath, 2022, Zhang et al., 2024). Thus, research needs to be done to further clarify terms and concepts used in our study and other studies.
So what?
Our findings can help us to design better cycling infrastructure. First of all, if we want to build better cycling infrastructure, it has to be comprehensible, safe and comfortable. Thus, focusing on either safety or comfort or comprehensibility would not help to improve infrastructure in a holistic way.
Furthermore, as comprehensibility can influence comfort and safety, researchers and practitioners should try to clarify and understand the concept of comprehensibility in the context of cycling infrastructure: What is it that makes infrastructure comprehensible for cyclists? How can we increase the comprehensibility of infrastructure to reduce negative effects on safety and comfort?
Lastly, the individual trade-off between safety and comprehensibility will make it more or less impossible to find design solutions that fit all users. While all cyclists are mainly afraid of being hit or run over by cars, some prioritize safety over comfort while others emphasize comfort. Thus, planners should be aware of the fact that every design decision is a trade-off that favors either cyclists that rate safety over comfort or cyclists prioritizing vice versa.
tl;dr
We conducted studies in a cycling simulator and conducted interviews to investigate cyclists’ perception of cycling infrastructure. We found three main criteria: safety, comfort, and comprehensibility. These criteria seem to be linked: while comprehensibility may influence safety and comfort, the latter are moderated by an individual trade-off. Further research is needed to investigate this trade-off and how to improve infrastructure’s comprehensibility. However, if you’re responsible for building cycling infrastructure, keep in mind that all three criteria are relevant: keep cyclists safe (cars are the main threat), make cycling comfortable, and try to create easy-to-understand infrastructure.
References
Abadi, M. G., & Hurwitz, D. S. (2018). Bicyclist’s perceived level of comfort in dense urban environments: How do ambient traffic, engineering treatments, and bicyclist characteristics relate? Sustainable Cities and Society, 40, 101–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2018.04.003
Berghöfer, F. L., & Vollrath, M. (2022). Cyclists’ perception of cycling infrastructure – A Repertory Grid approach. Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 87, 249–263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2022.04.012
Fitch, D. T., Carlen, J., & Handy, S. L. (2022). What makes bicyclists comfortable? Insights from a visual preference survey of casual and prospective bicyclists. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 155, 434–449. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2021.11.008
Friel, D. (2025). Mehr Lücken als das Radverkehrsnetz? Forschung zu intuitiv verständlicher Radinfrastruktur. Journal für Mobilität und Verkehr, 23, 30–38. https://doi.org/10.34647/jmv.nr23.id183
Friel, D., & Wachholz, S. (in press) Cyclists‘ Perception of Cycling Infrastructure: The Relationship between Safety, Comfort, and Comprehensibility.
Friel, D., Wachholz, S., Zimmermann, L., Werner, T., Schwedes, O., & Stark, R. (2023). Cyclists’ perceived safety on intersections and roundabouts – A qualitative bicycle simulator study. Journal of Safety Research, 87, 143–156. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2023.09.012
Geller, R. (2009). Four types of cyclists. https://www.portland.gov/transportation/walking-biking-transit-safety/documents/four-types-cyclists/download
Leben, J. (2016). Rad Fahrende: Wer sie sind und was sie brauchen. LIT VERLAG Dr. W. Hopf.
Monsere, C. M., Foster, N., Dill, J., & McNeil, N. (2015). User Behavior and Perceptions at Intersections with Turning and Mixing Zones on Protected Bike Lanes. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2520(1), 112–122. https://doi.org/10.3141/2520-13
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