Nuñez Velasco, JP, Mun Lee, Y, Uttley, J et al. (5 more authors) (2021) Will pedestrians cross the road before an automated vehicle? The effect of drivers’ attentiveness and presence on pedestrians’ road crossing behavior. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 12. 100466. ISSN 2590-1982
Abstract
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.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) |
Keywords: | Automated vehicles; Vulnerable road users; Virtual reality; Driver presence; Driver attentiveness |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > Institute for Transport Studies (Leeds) > ITS: Safety and Technology (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EU - European Union 723395 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 28 Jun 2022 16:21 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 23:02 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.trip.2021.100466 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:188439 |