Eyes on the Road: Understanding Cyclist Stress

Abstract: Across the nation, cyclist deaths are increasing every year. Concurrent with this, many local governments are trying to improve their infrastructure to better the outcomes of cyclist safety and to encourage more cycling. To date however, the most widely used method for assessing infrastructure on behalf of cyclists is Bicycle Level of Traffic Stress (BLTS), which in many cases considers only the physical factors of a roadway, such as lane widths or speed limits, and which in many ways are centered on a vehicular perspective. In general, these factors are a decent surrogate for cyclists’ stress and have the added benefit of having readily available data, but this paradigm only tells part of the story. In the past, obtaining empirical data from a cyclist’s perspective has been challenging, but at present biosensors have become smaller and more readily available which makes obtaining such data feasible. Such sensors are able to be fitted to cyclists to gauge their experiences of various roadway conditions and cyclist infrastructure in real time. The use of such devices allows for a cyclist’s perspective to be considered, as opposed to only relying on a vehicular perspective. Moreover, the work done in this study aims to show the connection, or lack thereof, between the conventional methods of assessing BLTS and empirical analysis of cyclist stress. By using eye-tracking data, this research shows how subjects in a naturalistic study react along different infrastructure segments, which to date have only been reviewed with the conventional BLTS methods. This work can aid transportation professionals as they put infrastructure changes into practice, so as to ensure the goals of improved safety and accessibility are being met instead of simply following convention.