Assessing Perceived Safety of Non Motorized Travel with Virtual Reality

Balali, Vahid; Fathi, Sahand · 2025 · ROSA P / San Jose State University. College of Business. Mineta Transportation Institute

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Summary

This study addresses the critical need for safer non-motorized transportation infrastructure, motivated by a 35% surge in U.S. bicyclist fatalities since 2010 and the limitations of existing data collection methods. Traditional approaches, such as surveys and naturalistic studies, suffer from hypothetical bias, lack of environmental control, or safety risks for participants. To overcome these challenges, the researchers utilized an Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE) bicycle simulator to safely and precisely assess how different roadway designs affect cyclists’ perceived safety, behavior, and physiological responses. The experimental design involved 50 participants (23 females, 27 males, aged 18–68) who navigated a virtual street scaled to resemble a real-world environment. The study employed a repeated-measures approach, exposing participants to three distinct infrastructure configurations: shared bike lanes (sharrows), curbside bike lanes, and protected bike lanes with flexible delineators. Data collection integrated off-the-shelf sensors to capture performance metrics (speed and lane position) and physiological responses (eye-tracking and heart rate). Participants also completed Likert-scale surveys before and after each scenario to rate perceived safety and willingness to cycle. Linear mixed-effects models were used to analyze the relationships between infrastructure design and the collected behavioral and psychophysiological data. The results indicated that protected bike lanes received the highest safety ratings and resulted in the lowest average cycling speeds. Physiologically, both curbside and protected lane scenarios elicited more focused gaze patterns compared to sharrows, suggesting higher concentration on the task when cyclists were separated from vehicle traffic. Heart rate data further implied that dedicated bike lanes (both curbside and protected) alleviated stress levels compared to shared lanes. Additionally, female participants exhibited a specific preference for the protected bike lane design. The study confirmed that IVE simulators are effective tools for capturing nuanced behavioral and physiological data without exposing participants to real-world hazards. The significance of this research lies in its validation of IVE technology as a robust method for evaluating transportation infrastructure. By providing objective physiological proxies for stress and attention, the study offers actionable insights for transportation engineers and policymakers. The findings support the implementation of protected and curbside bike lanes to enhance cyclist safety and comfort, potentially increasing bicycle usage in urban contexts. This approach bridges the gap between subjective survey data and risky naturalistic studies, enabling safer, more controlled evaluation of roadway designs for vulnerable road users.

Key finding

Protected bike lanes with flexible delineators yielded the highest perceived safety ratings, lowest cycling speeds, and most focused gaze patterns compared to curbside and shared lane designs.

Methodology

simulator

Sample size: 50

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

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• cyclist safety
• vru facing ehmi
• simulator validity fidelity

Information type

What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).

• Empirical Findings: observational prevalence
• Methodological Resource: tool software, validation psychometrics