Will pedestrians cross the road before an automated vehicle? The effect of drivers’ attentiveness and presence on pedestrians’ road crossing behavior

The impact of automated vehicles (AV) on pedestrians’ crossing behavior has been the topic of some recent studies, but findings are still scarce and inconclusive. The aim of this study is to determine whether the drivers’ presence and apparent attentiveness in a vehicle influences pedestrians’ crossing behavior, perceived behavioral control, and perceived risk, in a controlled environment, using a Head-mounted Display in an immersive Virtual Reality study.

Twenty participants took part in a road-crossing experiment. The VR environment consisted of a single lane one-way road with car traffic approaching from the right-hand side of the participant which travelled at 30 kmph. Participants were asked to cross the road if they felt safe to do so. The effect of three driver conditions on pedestrians’ crossing behavior were studied: Attentive driver, distracted driver, and no driver present. Two vehicles were employed with a fixed time gap (3.5 s and 5.5 s) between them to study the effects of time gaps on pedestrians’ crossing behavior. The manipulated vehicle yielded to the pedestrians in half of the trials, stopping completely before reaching the pedestrian’s position. The crossing decision, time to initiate the crossing, crossing duration, and safety margin were measured.

The main findings show that the vehicle’s motion cues (i.e. the gap between the vehicles, and the yielding behavior of the vehicle) were the most important factors affecting pedestrians’ crossing behavior. Therefore, future research should focus more on investigating how AVs should behave while interacting with pedestrians. Distracted driver condition leads to shorter crossing initiation time but the effect was small. No driver condition leads to smaller safety margin. Findings also showed that perceived behavioral control was higher and perceived risk was significantly lower when the driver appeared attentive. Given that drivers will be allowed to do other tasks while AVs are operating in the future, whether explicit communication will be needed in this situation should be further investigated.