Navigating Uncertainty: Cyclists’ Perceptions of Safety Amid Emerging Vehicles in Dutch Bicycle Lanes

Abstract

Cycling is a cornerstone of Dutch mobility and is internationally recognised as a safe, efficient, and sustainable mode of transport. However, Dutch cycling environments are becoming increasingly diverse due to the growing presence of electric bicycles, speed pedelecs, fatbikes, cargo bikes, delivery vehicles, and other emerging mobility technologies. While previous research has predominantly focused on objective safety outcomes such as crashes, injuries, and infrastructure design, considerably less is known about how cyclists experience safety within these evolving environments. Understanding perceived safety is essential, as it influences cycling behaviour, route choice, and long-term participation in cycling.

This study explores how cyclists experience and navigate safety in Dutch bicycle lanes amid the increasing presence of emerging vehicles and mobility technologies. Rather than examining objective safety risks alone, the research investigates how cyclists interpret interactions, respond to uncertainty, and adapt their behaviour within increasingly complex traffic environments. The central research question is: How do cyclists experience and navigate safety in an urban road environment increasingly shaped by new vehicles and emerging technologies?

A qualitative research design was adopted to capture cyclists' lived experiences. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 participants representing diverse ages, genders, cycling experience levels, cycling frequencies, and familiarity with Dutch cycling culture. The sample included both Dutch and international cyclists, enabling comparison across different user groups. Interview data were analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis, informed by risk perception theory and a socio-technical systems perspective.

The findings indicate that participants continue to regard the Dutch cycling system as highly functional and supportive of everyday mobility. Nevertheless, they also perceive cycling environments as becoming increasingly diverse, dynamic, and cognitively demanding. Contrary to expectations, participants rarely identified individual vehicle types as the principal source of perceived danger. Instead, safety concerns were primarily associated with uncertainty surrounding the behaviour of other road users and the increasing difficulty of interpreting, anticipating, and responding to interactions.

Six interconnected themes emerged from the analysis: interactional uncertainty, cognitive burden, trust and interpretability, adaptive burden, cumulative strain, and social categorisation. Together, these themes describe how cyclists experience and respond to an increasingly heterogeneous cycling environment. The findings demonstrate that emerging vehicles influence perceived safety indirectly by reducing behavioural predictability, increasing mental effort, generating emotional responses such as stress and frustration, and encouraging behavioural adaptations including defensive cycling, route changes, and avoidance strategies. Participants also relied on mental models and social categorisation to interpret unfamiliar road users and manage uncertainty during interactions.

These experiences were not evenly distributed across cyclists. Older cyclists, international cyclists, less experienced cyclists, and parents cycling with children generally reported greater vulnerability and relied more heavily on avoidance-based adaptation strategies. Drawing upon risk perception theory and socio-technical systems thinking, the study proposes that perceived cycling safety emerges through a common interactional process. Increasing vehicle diversity reduces behavioural predictability, which elevates cognitive burden and emotional strain. Cyclists subsequently adapt their behaviour to restore a sense of control and maintain acceptable levels of perceived safety. Perceived safety is therefore conceptualised not as a fixed property of infrastructure or an objective measure of crash risk, but as an emergent phenomenon arising from interactions between technologies, infrastructure, behavioural norms, and individual interpretation.

The study concludes that successful integration of emerging mobility technologies depends not only on accommodating new vehicles within existing infrastructure but also on preserving behavioural predictability and shared expectations between increasingly diverse road users. From a practical perspective, the findings suggest that policymakers and infrastructure planners should focus not only on reducing objective safety risks but also on maintaining behavioural predictability through infrastructure design, vehicle regulation, speed management, behavioural interventions, and education. Although the findings are based on qualitative interviews and are not statistically generalisable, they provide detailed insights into how interactional uncertainty shapes perceived safety in increasingly heterogeneous cycling environments.