Analysis of Path Distribution Characteristics and Safety Impact of Pedestrians Crossing in the Advance Right-Turn Lane

Abstract

Pedestrian crossing chaos has become one of the significant problems of urban traffic nowadays, and the irregular behavior of pedestrians affects traffic operation and regional safety to a certain extent. Aiming at the safety of pedestrian crossing in the advance right-turn lane, the pedestrian path deviation (PPD) is proposed to quantitatively describe the pedestrian crossing path deviation and analyze the impact of PPD on pedestrian crossing safety. With four advance right-turn lanes at an intersection in Qingdao as the investigation site, the spatiotemporal information of pedestrians and motor vehicles is collected to analyze the characteristics of pedestrian path distribution and the influencing factors of pedestrian crossing under the factors of traffic flow and environment. The pedestrian-vehicle conflict characteristics are analyzed from the perspective of conflict rate and deceleration-to-safety. The severity level of human-vehicle conflict is classified according to the cumulative frequency of safety deceleration, and the severity model of human-vehicle conflict based on ordered probit is established. The results show that buildings such as large shopping malls and transportation hubs have an attractive effect on pedestrians. Under the influence of unilateral buildings, the proportion of irregular use of pedestrian crosswalks reaches 46.9%. There is a significant positive correlation between pedestrian flow and PPD index, and the increase of pedestrian flow causes the aggravation of pedestrian path deviation. The results of the analysis of PPD with pedestrian-vehicle conflict rate and conflict severity show that the increase of PPD significantly increases the risk of pedestrian-vehicle conflict occurrence; in addition, motor vehicle speed and PPD have significant effects on the severity of pedestrian-vehicle conflict, and the increase of both vehicle traffic speed and PPD causes the aggravation of the severity level of pedestrian-vehicle conflict. Combined with the above findings, the PPD index has some value in quantifying pedestrian spatial violations as well as regional safety evaluation, and the findings can provide theoretical guidance for the establishment of traffic facilities.