Project Summary
Nottingham Trent University is looking to get more people to use bicycles by providing two training interventions. The first will provide video-based examples of best practice riding with commentary across a range of road types and scenarios; the second will offer a cycling-specific hazard perception test, allowing people to develop their skills and feel more confident about riding. The team will evaluate which approach has the greater impact on potential cyclists’ willingness to get on a bike.
Project Achievements
We created and evaluated two video-based resources created from naturalistic cycling footage: A positively-framed video demonstrating best-practice riding and emphasising the benefits of cycling, and a ‘negatively-framed’ resource showing how to spot danger when cycling. This latter element was a cyclist’s hazard perception test comprised of 360-degree videos where users can change their direction of view. Hazard training was also included. Pre-screened participants who reported to never cycle or only occasionally (N=300) were exposed to one or both video resources in an online study in an effort to increase their intentions to cycle. Control participants saw videos designed to increase driver confidence on motorways. Results showed a more positive attitude towards cycling following both cycling interventions, and increased intentions to cycle after having seen the positively-framed video. The hazard clips increased awareness of hazards cyclists face.
Conclusions
Our positively-framed video highlighting the benefits of cycling and showing best cycling practice was found to have a positive effect on viewers’ attitude to cycling and showed a modest increase in willingness to cycle. Our hazard perception test and training resulted in more awareness of the hazards that cyclists face on the road and how to deal with them. More research is needed to further develop and test our resources and measure actual changes in cycling uptake. Our video-based resources will be disseminated locally in the first instance. We will seek national B2B distribution on a more commercial basis, targeting training providers, cycling-service companies, and the gig economy. The resources will also provide research tools for postgraduate and
undergraduate research projects.
Next Steps
The video resources will be made available to our local partner RideWise and the NTU Cycle-2-Work (C2W) scheme. We will licence the resources to our spinout company, Esitu Solutions, who will disseminate nationally, scaling up the benefits of cycling and supporting the DfT’s active travel policy. We will look to develop new collaborations in seeking future funding to create new content and seek to broaden the measures recorded by adding ‘hazard prediction’ and ‘hazard avoidance’ measures to our clips. Other opportunities include mobile and VR apps, integration into HGV CPC courses (building on the successful ‘changing places’
approach that has been used in previous HGV courses), and working with TfL to support their gig economy charter.
