Perception of safety - research ideas, opinions needed!

The government have a Bikeability course, which is aimed at children

Pretty sure that it's aimed at adults too.

Can adults take part in Bikeability?

Yes, adults can take part in Bikeability. The skills taught as part of Bikeability will last a lifetime, and it is never too late to learn.

Your local authority might have an adult cycle training offer. They might call it Bikeability, or refer to the National Standard for cycle training, the standard upon which Bikeability is based.

Ask in here

your own body, the BMA, has published some excellent guidance on living with risk, suggest you read up

or > https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/358042/rrcgb2013-02.pdf

and > http://www.ctc.org.uk/resources/ctc-cycling-statistics

in particular > http://www.ctc.org.uk/resources/ctc-cycling-statistics#How many people think that cycling is too dangerous?

Adult cyclists are dying on roads every day, and I feel not enough is being done to address this with regards to cycling awareness, or raising the issue of safety perception amongst adult cyclists.

I don't really understand this sentence. Do you mean you feel a lack of general aweness of cycing, and the perceived safety of cycling is a contributer to cycling KSIs?

Plenty of good advice in this thread already, so not much to add. You should do a Bikeability course yourself. Where do you live? If you're in London, chances are that you can do one through your local council for free. You could do worse than interviewing Patrick Field of the London School of Cycling. He's vastly experienced and insightful. Our own skydancer, who like some others in this thread, works for CTUK, is, too and well worth talking to. (He will discover this thread before long.)

You could hook up with skydancer to write about some of the excellent work he and CTUK have been doing on broadening the audience for Bikeability, e.g. in training lorry drivers. Cycle training is not just for people who ride bikes every day, but also, of course, for people like professional drivers.

On risk, your one-stop shop is here:

http://www.john-adams.co.uk/

A wealth of material from one of the best writers on the subject.

H*lm*ts will invariably crop up at some point during your work, so you should look at (critical of helmets) http://www.cycle-helmets.org/. Needless to say, there are also pro-h*lm*t sites out there.

There is much misunderstanding of cycle training. At present, the availability of training programmes too limited both in the intensity of the training and the number of trainees to draw general conclusions. There is some historical data that cycling skill helps people with risk assessment etc., e.g. the data that John Forester used in 'Effective Cycling' (a must-read for you), but that is now very old (and US-based).

Ultimately, cycling is a social skill and the main issues, including what influences risk and risk perception, are for the most part sociological and cultural (e.g., the seeming folly of riding a primitive bike when we should really be grasping for the stars under the progressivist agendas of the past century).

Anyway, there is actually a vast field of possible themes and topics for your dissertation out there, and the difficulty facing you will be how to limit it to something manageable.

So where are you at with this project Craig?