Citation

Zhao J, Malenje JO, Tang Y, Han Y. Accid. Anal. Prev. 2019; 129: 76-83.

Affiliation

University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, 516 Jungong Road, Shanghai, PR China. Electronic address: hanyin2000@126.com.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.aap.2019.05.012

PMID

31128443

Abstract

Gap acceptance represents a pedestrian's assessment of how safe it may be to use an available gap in traffic flow at a particular point in time. Though walking is a major component of urban mobility, the high rate of fatal interaction with motor vehicle traffic raises safety issues around how pedestrians decide to accept the available gap. This paper explored these interactions by modeling gap acceptance behavior at the midblock crosswalks. Unlike other pedestrian gap acceptance studies that focus on individual psychological and sociological factors that are difficult to control or manage, this study focused on six environmental factors that we considered important and as having the potential to affect the pedestrians' gap acceptance decision at the crosswalks, i.e. gap size, crossing distance, number of waiting pedestrians, waiting time, vehicle traffic volume and position of pedestrian (whether on street kerb or median). Video data was collected on pedestrian gap acceptance from 13 midblock crosswalk locations in Shanghai, China. A Logit model with 96% accuracy was developed to describe and predict the pedestrian gap acceptance behaviors. The results show that gap size and crossing distance have the highest effect on the pedestrian gap acceptance decision. Pedestrians waiting at the kerbside could confidently accept gaps (with a 95% probability) when the gap is longer than 2.2s, 5.9s, and 9.6s under the condition that the crossing distance is 4 m (one lane), 7.5 m (two lanes), and 11 m (three lanes), respectively while pedestrians waiting at the median could confidently accept gaps when the gap is longer than 1.6s, 5.3s, and 8.5s respectively under the same conditions. The recommendations on improving the crossing safety are proposed accordingly.

Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Crossing behaviour; Gap acceptance probability; Logit model; Mid-block crosswalks; Pedestrians