보행자의 선호 보행방향에 관한 조사 및 분석

Abstract

Why do some countries walk on the right and others on the left? People have a dominant hand which leads to a natural tendency to favor one side of the road or another depending on the means of transportation being used. The primary objective of this study was to investigate the stereotype of Korean regarding preferred walking direction in encountering various facilities and provide the appropriate information to traffic policy makers. Six hundred Korean male and female subjects aging from 12 to 83 were selected to investigate the various statistics about their preferred walking direction and their employment characteristics on walking diverse facilities. The walking directions of eleven different facilities were asked along with other relative subjects' characteristics(e.g., age, gender, hand and foot dominance) to determine the relationship among these obtained data. The descriptive statistics showed that 73.7% and 26.3% were preferred walking right and left direction respectively. Moreover, various statistical analysis revealed that general tendency of walking direction was varied by hand and foot dominances. There were strong tendency that right-handed people prefer walking right side of the road and vise versa, hence this should be considered in setting up traffic policies. As a concluding remark, it is better to design traffic policies and regulations in the way that peoples' preference and expectation.