Cyclists' Crossing Intentions When Interacting with Automated Vehicles: A Virtual Reality Study

Most of cyclists’ fatalities originate from collisions with motorized vehicles. It is expected that automated vehicles (AV) will be safer than human-driven vehicles, but this depends on the nature of interactions between non-automated road users, among them cyclists. Little research on the interactions between cyclists and AVs exists. This study aims to determine the main factors influencing cyclists’ crossing intentions when interacting with an automated vehicle as compared to a conventional vehicle (CV) using a 360° video-based virtual reality (VR) method. The considered factors in this study included vehicle type, gap size between cyclist and vehicle, vehicle speed, and right of way. Each factor had two levels. In addition, cyclist’s self-reported behavior and trust in automated vehicles were also measured. Forty-seven participants experienced 16 different crossing scenarios in a repeated measures study using VR. These scenarios are the result of combinations of the studied factors at different levels. In total, the experiment lasted 60 min. The results show that the gap size and the right of way were the primary factors affecting the crossing intentions of the individuals. The vehicle type and vehicle speed did not have a significant effect on the crossing intentions. Finally, the 360° video-based VR method scored relatively high as a research method and comparable with the results of a previous study investigating pedestrians’ crossing intentions confirming its suitability as a research methodology to study cyclists’ crossing intentions.