Psychological stress of bicycling with traffic: examining heart rate variability of bicyclists in natural urban environments

Bicyclist Stress Perceptions and Heart Rate Variability

“…Overall, the general trend of low HF-HRV predicting greater agreement with the stress statements is mostly consistent across road conditions and survey items (negative slopes in all panels of Figure 1), albeit with great uncertainty. The scant but growing evidence (Doorley et al 2015;Jones et al 2016;Caviedes and Figliozzi 2018;Teixeira et al 2020;Fitch, Sharpnack, and Handy 2020;Werner, Resch, and Loidl 2019;Zeile et al 2016) that bicyclist stress can be estimated through physiological markers should be scrutinized and reconsidered. What are physiological markers really measuring in bicycling studies?…”

“…Given existing bicyclist stress studies, including this one, evidence is weak on this connection. While this study attempted to control (both experimentally (see Fitch et al (2020)) and statistically) important confounds, the number of potential confounds to consider in such experiments are much more numerous (Laborde, Mosley, and Thayer 2017;Ausri and Bigazzi 2021). The differences in HF-HRV found between road conditions in Fitch et al (2020) may have less to do with psychological stress, and more to do with other factors.…”

“…Using data from a prior cross-over bicycling field experiment (see Fitch et al (2020) for details), I examine data from 20 female college undergraduates who bicycled on five road conditions, answering eight survey items about stress with ordered categorical responses for each road condition (Table 1). Each participant rode at a comfortable pace with their usual bicycle on five flat road conditions, with rests in-between, during times of low heat and low wind (to avoid physical exertion).…”

“…The primary predictor of interest is the standard deviation of high frequency filtered inter-heart-beat intervals, also called high frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV). I extracted the HF-HRV from inter-heart-beat intervals using the maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT) where frequency filter parameters vary based on person-specific inter-heart-beat time series making the metric a person-scaled standardized measure of HF-HRV (see Fitch et al (2020) for details about signal processing). HF-HRV is a commonly used marker for psychological stress due to its close connection to vagal tone (the physiological basis of all current theories linking HRV to psychology) (Laborde, Mosley, and Thayer 2017).…”

An international comparison of the self-reported causes of cyclist stress using quasi-naturalistic cycling

“…Some studies combine quasi-naturalistic cycling methods with a rider characteristics focused survey, including demographics and transportation attitudes (Nuñez et al, 2018;Caviedes and Figliozzi, 2018;Vandenbulcke et al, 2011;Feizi et al, 2019;Fitch et al, 2020). Naturalistic cycling studies allow participants to cycle as they normally would without any set routes.…”