What Can Eye Gaze Teach Us About Real-World Cycling? Insights From the Oxford RobotCycle Project

2026-06-03

AI Summary

This study investigates cyclists’ subconscious perception of safety risks in real urban environments, with particular emphasis on subjective feelings of safety that are difficult to capture through self-reporting. For the first time, wearable eye-tracking technology was deployed in naturalistic cycling settings to record gaze behavior across different road types—such as dedicated bike lanes, mixed traffic lanes, and bus-bike shared corridors—and during typical traffic events like overtaking maneuvers and pedestrian intrusions. Contextual analysis of these data reveals how cognitive load and stress levels vary with environmental conditions. The findings demonstrate that lane design, intersection layout, and dynamic traffic interactions significantly influence eye movement patterns, offering objective indicators for assessing perceived cycling safety. This work also validates both the potential and limitations of eye-tracking methodologies in authentic traffic contexts.

Abstract

Although much is known about the physical danger of cycling situations, less is understood about the perceived danger of cycling. Furthermore, perception of danger may be filtered at a subconscious level and therefore difficult for one to self-report. To this end, these subconscious perceptions can be revealed through physiological metrics such as eye gaze. This paper explores the perceived safety of cycling in Oxford, United Kingdom and explores the ability of wearable eye tracking glasses to produce insights about the differences in perception under different environments and events. This paper finds that eye gaze patterns change between using bike lanes, car lanes and shared bus lanes, representing different cognitive challenges of each lane type. This paper presents that different intersections have significantly different eye gaze patterns which may have implications for cyclist stress. Finally, eye gaze patterns differ in the presence of events such as passes and pedestrians in the road compared to when cycling with no events. This paper draws conclusions on the benefits and limitations of using wearable eye trackers to estimate stress and cyclist workload.

Problem

• perceived danger
• eye gaze
• cycling safety
• subconscious perception
• cyclist stress

Innovation

• eye gaze
• wearable eye tracking
• perceived safety
• cycling stress
• real-world cycling