Predictors of the frequency and subjective experience of cycling near misses: Findings from the first two years of the UK Near Miss Project

Using this data, we find a decline of almost a third in incident rates in 2015 compared to 2014, which we believe is likely to be largely an artefact due to differences in reporting rates. This suggests caution about interpreting small fluctuations in subjectively reported near miss rates. However, in both years near miss rates are many times more frequent than injury collisions. In both years of data collection our findings are very similar in terms of the patterning of incident types, and how frightening different incident categories are, which increases confidence in these findings. We find that new cyclists experience very high incident rates compared to other cyclists, and test a conceptual model explaining how perceived deliberateness, near-miss status, and scariness are connected. For example, incidents that are perceived to be deliberate are more likely to be experienced as very frightening, independent of their 'near miss' status.