Title: Analysis of Dilemma Zone for Crossing Pedestrians at Uncontrolled Midblock Sections
Abstract: Pedestrians are vulnerable and are at risk whenever they share road space with vehicular traffic. The risk to pedestrians is especially high in countries like India; where a large number of pedestrians are seen on roads and vehicle traffic usually do not yield to them. Therefore it is common that the most of the victims of road accidents, especially in urban areas, in India are pedestrians. One of the primary reasons for accidents at pedestrian crossing (when drivers do not yield to pedestrians) is the inability to judge safe gap while crossing a road. Often pedestrians are in state of confusion/dilemma while making a decision whether to accept or reject a gap. Under these circumstances, decision making for pedestrians during road crossing is usually a tough task. This paper aims at analyzing and quantifying dilemma zone for crossing pedestrians. A field study was undertaken in which crossing pedestrians and through moving vehicles were recorded using video cameras at selected midblock road sections having marked pedestrian crossing. Total of 1107 pedestrian gaps are extracted and studied; both temporal and spatial gaps are considered for analysis. Dilemma zone is determined by using different methods, namely, gap cumulative distribution method, binary logit method, support vector machine, and probabilistic method. For the selected midblock sections, dilemma zone starts at 50m and ends at 60m upstream from the marked pedestrian crossing. The authors believe marking the dilemma zone in the field or warning pedestrians when a vehicle enters the dilemma zone will help the pedestrian in making better decision thereby improving pedestrians’ safety.
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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