This paper analyzes the distracted pedestrians' waiting time before crossing
the road in three conditions: 1) not distracted, 2) distracted with a
smartphone and 3) distracted with a smartphone in the presence of virtual
flashing LED lights on the crosswalk as a safety measure. For the means of data
collection, we adapted an in-house developed virtual immersive reality
environment (VIRE). A total of 42 volunteers participated in the experiment.
Participants' positions and head movements were recorded and used to calculate
walking speeds, acceleration and deceleration rates, surrogate safety measures,
time spent playing smartphone game, etc. After a descriptive analysis on the
data, the effects of these variables on pedestrians' waiting time are analyzed
by employing a cox proportional hazard model. Several factors were identified
as having impact on waiting time. The results show that an increase in initial
walk speed, percentage of time the head was oriented toward smartphone during
crossing, bigger minimum missed gaps and unsafe crossings resulted in shorter
waiting times. On the other hand, an increase in the percentage of time the
head was oriented toward smartphone during waiting time, crossing time and maze
solving time, means longer waiting times for participants.Comment: Published in the proceedings of Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics
201