This presentation examines the relationship between driver knowledge of recommended cycling practice, how drivers interpret cyclist behaviour and their intended driving behaviour around cyclists. Negative interpretations of cyclist behaviour provide the conditions for driver frustration at being delayed, to manifest as anger directed towards the cyclist, putting the cyclist in physical danger and adding to perceptions of risk that prevent more people from using bicycles as a mode of transport, restricting the wider societal benefits that this ‘mode shift’ would bring.

The findings showed a link between applied knowledge of cyclist road positioning and more positive attitudes towards cyclists in close pass scenarios. It found positive opinions of cyclists in general were linked to better applied road positioning knowledge, but improvements in this knowledge could not be linked to changes in the Highway Code. It found that a video designed to improve knowledge of cyclist positioning practice and provide legitimacy by reference to its inclusion in the UK Highway Code, had an immediate acute positive effect on driver attitudes towards cyclists and their intended overtaking behaviour. The results imply that knowledge-based road safety interventions can be effective if they help drivers make more positive interpretations of situations that frame the behaviour of others as being in line with expected norms and mitigate an emotional response of state-anger by disrupting the actor-observer bias.

Will Cubbin, Research Director, Road Safety GB

Will Cubbin was appointed Road Safety GB's Research Director in November 2022.

He is also is the manager of the Safer Essex Roads Partnership. From 2014 to 2022, he was the partnership’s strategy analyst, developing the role from a straightforward performance monitoring and data reporting function, to proactively identifying and researching priority areas for road safety activity.