Katja Kircher

Katja Kircher is an Associate Professor and Research Leader with two main areas of focus — road users’ attention and active travel on rural roads.

The first area concerns, among other things, the attentional demands placed on different groups of road users and how they manage these. Katja’s second research area revolves around the situation of cyclists in traffic, particularly how overtaking of cyclists is carried out today and what is required to make cycling — especially on rural roads — safe and pleasant.

Attention
Together with Christer Ahlström, Katja developed the theory of Minimum Required Attention which is used, for example, to compare attentional demands on different groups of road users , to examine how different situations affect gaze behaviour and to assess the complexity of traffic environments that children of different ages are able to handle. The theory is also suitable for evaluating whether and how tasks not related to driving affect attention, and how infrastructure design can lead to systematic attentional problems. There is great potential to further develop the theory, particularly regarding several practical aspects of implementation in different contexts. Please feel free to get in touch if you are interested in collaboration.

Overtaking
Previous research has shown that the way in which cyclists on rural roads are overtaken with motor vehicles affects their sense of safety and security . Several studies link different situational variables to variations in lateral overtaking distance, which, together with speed, in turn influence how cyclists experience the overtaking manoeuvre .

Katja led a study in VTI’s cycling simulator which found that cyclists prefer motor vehicles to change lanes completely during overtaking, ensuring an overtaking distance of at least 2.5 metres . This was also confirmed in a study carried out in real traffic [link forthcoming, article accepted but not yet published]. We know that cyclists experience fear and stress when motor traffic feels intimidating, but it is currently unknown what the situation looks like in different parts of Sweden and on different types of roads. It is also not known how drivers can be influenced to consistently carry out safe and reassuring overtaking manoeuvres. The project ComCy, which runs until April 2027, aims to provide answers to some of these questions.