Department of Traffic Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, P.R. China.
PLoS One. 2019 Mar 14;14(3):e0213876. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213876. eCollection 2019.
The vehicle-pedestrian encounter at midblock crosswalks in urban centers is inevitable but the challenge to urban transportation planners is in achieving a balance between traffic flow efficiency and pedestrian safety. Vehicles are expected to yield to pedestrians who have a right of way at the midblock unsignalized crosswalks but, failure to yield causes conflicts that at times are fatal. This study investigated the effect of macroscopic factors on the vehicle yielding. Six environmental factors are considered: temporal gap size, number of traffic lanes, number of waiting pedestrians, position of pedestrian (whether on street kerb or median), traffic flow direction and presence (or absence) of monitoring ePolice. Video Data on six observed variables that influenced vehicle yielding was collected from 13 uncontrolled crosswalk locations in Shanghai city in the Peoples Republic of China. A Logit model with a 95.9% accuracy was developed to describe the vehicle yielding behavior. The results showed that gap size and number of traffic lanes had the highest influence on driver yielding decision and that drivers were more likely to yield if ePolice was present. The sensitivity analysis was conducted and appropriate recommendations on improving the pedestrians crossing safety were proposed accordingly.
在城市中心的路段横道上，车辆与行人的相遇是不可避免的，但城市交通规划者面临的挑战是如何在提高交通效率和保障行人安全之间取得平衡。在无信号路段横道上，车辆应礼让行人先行，但车辆不让行的情况时有发生，导致冲突，有时甚至会致命。本研究调查了宏观因素对车辆礼让行为的影响。考虑了六个环境因素：时间间隔大小、交通车道数量、等待行人数量、行人位置（是否在街道路缘石或中央分隔带）、交通流向和电子警察的存在（或不存在）。从中华人民共和国上海市的 13 个无控制的人行横道地点收集了影响车辆礼让的六个观察变量的视频数据。开发了一个准确率为 95.9%的 Logit 模型来描述车辆礼让行为。结果表明，间隙大小和交通车道数量对驾驶员礼让决策的影响最大，如果有电子警察在场，驾驶员更有可能礼让行人。进行了敏感性分析，并提出了相应的改善行人过街安全的建议。
