Behavioral Dynamics of Pedestrians Crossing between Two Moving Vehicles

Abstract

This study examines the human behavioral dynamics of pedestrians crossing a street with vehicular traffic. To this end, an experiment was constructed in which human participants cross a road between two moving vehicles in a virtual reality setting. A mathematical model is developed in which the position is given by a simple function. The model is used to extract information on each crossing by performing root-mean-square deviation (RMSD) minimization of the function from the data. By isolating the parameter adjusted to gap features, we find that the subjects primarily changed the timing of the acceleration to adjust to changing gap conditions, rather than walking speed or duration of acceleration. Moreover, this parameter was also adjusted to the vehicle speed and vehicle type, even when the gap size and timing were not changed. The model is found to provide a description of gap affordance via a simple inequality of the fitting parameters. In addition, the model turns out to predict a constant bearing angle with the crossing point, which is also observed in the data. We thus conclude that our model provides a mathematical tool useful for modeling crossing behaviors and probing existing models. It may also provide insight into the source of traffic accidents.