Presentation
The Impact of Vehicle Velocity and Size on Pedestrian Street-Crossing Decisions
SessionWednesday Poster Session
DescriptionIncreases in pedestrian fatalities make it critical to understand factors that influence street-crossing decisions. Prior studies have shown that pedestrians misperceive time-to-collision (TTC) of faster and smaller vehicles as arriving later than slower and larger vehicles, respectively. The current study measured the effects of vehicle size and speed on street-crossing decisions. Twenty-four participants viewed traffic scenes in which they stood at the curb of a roadway while a car and a motorcycle approached sequentially from the left, at either 40 or 80 km/h, before disappearing. The second vehicle’s time-to-collision (TTC) at this time of occlusion varied. Participants, using a handheld controller, reported whether they would choose to cross the street. Data from each participant were fitted with psychometric functions to derive the TTC at occlusion when participants were equally likely to choose to cross or wait, and sensitivity to TTC differences. Results indicated that participants accepted shorter time gaps at the faster speed, consistent with prior effects of velocity; the effect of vehicle size was not significant. There were no significant effects on sensitivity. These findings suggest that perceptual biases in TTC estimates due to vehicle size and speed, in turn, bias street-crossing decisions.
Event Type
Poster
TimeWednesday, October 21st5:30pm - 6:30pm PDT
LocationSummit Pavilion
Similar Presentations