An Analysis of Pedestrian Waiting Time at Uncontrolled Crosswalks Using Discrete Choice Model

A study of pedestrians crossing behavior is conducted at an uncontrolled mid-block crosswalk in Istanbul Turkey, to model the pedestrians waiting time, related to their behavior for making the crossing decision. This article focused on the issues encountered in the modeling of the operational behavior of pedestrians. The discrete choice framework is used because of its capacity to deal with individuals’ choice behavior. Pedestrians waiting time is classified into three levels, including low, medium, and high levels based on the level of service of pedestrians waiting time. The pedestrians’ behavior prediction has been improved by analyzing, taking into account three levels for pedestrian behavior

Pedestrian age and gender in relation to crossing behavior at midblock crossings in India

Pedestrians have unique needs to ensure their safety as they interact with others within a transportation system. Since this is especially true in third world context, it is imperative to gain a better understanding of pedestrian behaviors in developing countries. The goal is to have planners and engineers create appropriate design guidelines and inform policy decisions. Data on pedestrian characteristics and behavior metrics were gathered from midblock crossings in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Quadratic and logistic regressions suggest that pedestrian delay and utilization of crossings increase with age, while conflicts decrease with it. Male waiting time is approximately half of female waiting time, and males are twice as likely to cause conflicts with motor vehicles. These strong patterns will hopefully aid in the understanding of pedestrian behavior in relation to motor vehicle traffic in urban areas of developing countries, encouraging safer crossings to be designed

COVID-19 and Traffic Safety: Exploring Exposure, Crash Frequency and Severity, and Roadway and Network Design

Early COVID-19 lockdowns in the first half of 2020 largely kept people at home, thereby reducing motor vehicle traffic levels. Theoretically, reduced traffic exposure should have resulted in reduced motor vehicle crashes. However, a variety of factors may have complicated this relationship. In order to better understand the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on traffic safety outcomes, we explore fatalities, injuries, and total crashes before and during the lockdowns on both the national and state levels. We provide descriptive statistics and create negative binomial regressions exploring the role of vehicle, user, and built environment factors on traffic safety outcomes. Findings suggest that crash counts in Region 6 were 35%-50% lower in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Crashes that occurred during the COVID-19 lockdowns were more likely to be more severe. Fatal pedestrian crashes across the U.S. decreased during COVID-19 (although not as much as overall fatal crashes) and fatal bicyclist crash counts increased. Drunk drivers were less prevalent in nationwide fatalities but more prevalent in overall Region 6 crashes. Overall, crashes were more likely single-vehicle fixed-object or rollover crashes involving unsafe speeds. In Texas, suburban areas saw the most crashes before and during COVID-19, although they also saw the greatest decrease. Rural Texas crashes were most likely to result in a fatality or serious injury, and that likelihood got worse during the COVID-19 lockdowns. While Texas freeways and arterials saw the largest decreases in crash counts, these functional classifications still had the most crashes. Urban interstates and rural local roads in Texas were notable because these two functional classifications actually saw increases in the number of fatal and serious injury crashes during COVID-19 lockdowns

COVID-19 and Traffic Safety: Exploring Exposure, Crash Frequency and Severity, and Roadway and Network Design

Early COVID-19 lockdowns in the first half of 2020 largely kept people at home, thereby reducing motor vehicle traffic levels. Theoretically, reduced traffic exposure should have resulted in reduced motor vehicle crashes. However, a variety of factors may have complicated this relationship. In order to better understand the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on traffic safety outcomes, we explore fatalities, injuries, and total crashes before and during the lockdowns on both the national and state levels. We provide descriptive statistics and create negative binomial regressions exploring the role of vehicle, user, and built environment factors on traffic safety outcomes. Findings suggest that crash counts in Region 6 were 35%-50% lower in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Crashes that occurred during the COVID-19 lockdowns were more likely to be more severe. Fatal pedestrian crashes across the U.S. decreased during COVID-19 (although not as much as overall fatal crashes) and fatal bicyclist crash counts increased. Drunk drivers were less prevalent in nationwide fatalities but more prevalent in overall Region 6 crashes. Overall, crashes were more likely single-vehicle fixed-object or rollover crashes involving unsafe speeds. In Texas, suburban areas saw the most crashes before and during COVID-19, although they also saw the greatest decrease. Rural Texas crashes were most likely to result in a fatality or serious injury, and that likelihood got worse during the COVID-19 lockdowns. While Texas freeways and arterials saw the largest decreases in crash counts, these functional classifications still had the most crashes. Urban interstates and rural local roads in Texas were notable because these two functional classifications actually saw increases in the number of fatal and serious injury crashes during COVID-19 lockdowns

Autonomous Vehicle Communication Strategies Modeled in Virtual Reality

We sought to better understand how autonomous vehicle (AV) communication strategies impact human road users’ perceptions and behaviors. More specifically, we explored the impact of different external human-machine interface (eHMI) designs on understanding, task load, comfort, trust, acceptance, and reaction time. To accomplish this, we created virtual reality (VR) scenarios where human participants interacted with AVs. Participants experienced biking, driving, and pedestrian simulators and were brought back after initial testing to explore acclimation and learning effects. In terms of perceptions, the presence of an eHMI was the strongest predictor of understanding, comfort, trust, and acceptance outcomes in the statistical models when controlling for all other variables. There was a clear divide between text-based eHMIs and non-text eHMIs, with text-based eHMIs reporting better perception scores and the LED Windshield reporting the worst perception scores. There were perception acclimation effects detected (most notable for task load and comfort), but they had less of an impact than the presence of an eHMI. Perception outcomes had weaker relationships with participant characteristics than with AV characteristics. While behavioral outcomes should be interpreted with caution because of low participant sample sizes, behavioral results largely mirrored perception results in that significant reductions in reaction time were observed with the presence of an eHMI (3.69 second reduction), yielding (3.16 second reduction), and acclimation (0.134 second reduction per trial). Results suggest that eHMI design, AV behavior, and acclimation are most impactful in terms of both perceptions and reaction time

Enhancing Evaluation of Wildlife Detection Systems

Every year in the United States, wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVCs) cause 200 human fatalities, 26,000 human injuries, and substantial harm to wildlife populations, resulting in approximately $8.4 billion in total costs. The research team examined two US 64 bridges located near Lumberton, New Mexico that were designed to allow wildlife to cross underneath. Monitoring stations were positioned at each of the crossings so that both wildlife approaches and passages were observed. Special mounting brackets were designed and fabricated to allow for the installation of monitoring equipment. Wildlife observations were supplemented with WVC counts. Over seven months of study, nearly 100,000 wildlife photos were captured consisting of 1,438 individual animals using the crossing structures. Both crossings saw passage rates of approximately 80%. Findings suggest that elk and deer used both the smaller and larger crossings. Elk predominated during December through March while deer predominated during May through June, with most crossings occurring during defined nighttime peaks. There have been no elk and fewer deer collisions since the wildlife crossing system was installed. WVCs that have occurred were near the ends of the wildlife fencing, suggesting that fencing extent may be a factor that warrants further research. Lessons learned through this project help develop our understanding of WVCs, contributing to our goal of saving lives – both human and wildlife – and enhancing wildlife conservation efforts

Impact of Bus Rapid Transit Construction and Infrastructure on Traffic Safety: A Case Study From Albuquerque, New Mexico

Bus rapid transit (BRT) systems are becoming increasingly popular, yet their interaction with traffic safety in the United States has not been fully explored. How do BRT systems affect traffic safety, specifically for vulnerable road users such as pedestrians? Albuquerque, New Mexico recently installed the Albuquerque Rapid Transit (ART) system, a BRT system running along Central Avenue, a main east/west corridor through the city. Using collision data and volume counts for three snapshots in time (before, during, and after construction of the BRT), we analyzed the safety outcomes (all collisions and fatal/serious injury collisions) for all road users and pedestrians. We compared outcomes from the ART corridor to outcomes on alternative routes, on control segments of Central Avenue (those that did not see ART construction), and across the city. Collision counts saw the strongest decreases from before to after on the ART corridor (−8.2%). These benefits were more marked for fatal and serious injury collisions, with those collisions decreasing by 64.9% on ART (compared with a 5.7% decrease on control segments). Although vehicle volumes decreased an average of 28.6% after construction on Central Avenue, per-vehicle rates of fatal and serious collisions still decreased 57.1%. These results indicate that ART made the corridor safer overall (fewer total collisions), and while the risk to individual drivers increased, an individual’s chance of being fatally or seriously injured decreased significantly (−57.1%). Findings suggest that BRT systems can play an important role in the pursuit of a safe, healthy, and efficient transportation system