Understanding Interactions between Drivers and Pedestrian Features at Signalized Intersections.

摘要

Florida experienced serious pedestrian safety problems and had the highest pedestrian fatality rate in the U.S. from 2008–2011. Pedestrian safety at signalized intersections is the most serious concern due to frequent and severe conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians. Pedestrian features directly related to pedestrian safety are used to increase driver compliance behaviors and reduce vehicle-pedestrian conflicts. This project aimed to explore driver behaviors at signalized intersections with four identified pedestrian features—“STOP HERE ON RED,” “NO TURN ON RED,” “TURNING VEHICLES YIELD TO PEDESTRIANS,” and “RIGHT ON RED ARROW AFTER STOP” signs—by using an innovative safety data source, the Strategic Highway Research Program 2 (SHRP 2) Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS) data. To improve data processing efficiency, two software tools were developed to assist researchers in data reduction in an automatic and/or semi-automatic manner: (1) the NDS Automatic Video Processing Tool, which automatically detects and tracks pedestrians and traffic signal indications in NDS videos, and (2) the NDS Data Reduction and Analysis Tool, which assists researchers in reviewing and analyzing NDS videos and sensor data. A cross-sectional analysis was used to assess the safety effectiveness of the selected pedestrian features by comparing the observed compliant driver behaviors between two groups: a feature group (with the pedestrian feature) and a control group (without the pedestrian feature). Chi-square tests were used to determine whether the proportional difference of compliant driver behaviors between the two groups was significant.