My name is Matthew Webster and I’m a Senior Researcher and PhD student at Southampton University, I spent the past four years at Loughborough University completing both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees before moving to Southampton.

The first project I am a part of is the CRoss-modal Intervention To Improve Cycling Awareness Levels (CRITICAL) The project will develop and evaluate a cross- modal training program to improve cycling safety. The project will be training car drivers to interact with cyclists and cyclists to interact with car drivers. This will enable both road users to understand risky behaviours and develop higher levels of awareness for the other road user.

The second project is my PhD thesis, this project is Applying a sociotechnical systems approach to improve cycling safety and increase cycling participation. By treating cycling as a system and looking at cycling from different angles including social, technical, hardware and organisational aspect, it hopes to identify and improve road safety for cyclists.

I myself am currently an Elite cyclist in the UK and have been for 5 years now, competing nationally and internationally, therefore this project is of both an interest and of relevance to me. My experience and knowledge for both sport and academia will strengthen both the CRITICAL and PhD projects respectively exploring ways to increase safety and increase participation for cyclists.