Evade or rush? Investigating jaywalkers' sequential crossing decisions at mid-blocks without crossing facilities

Abstract

Jaywalking at the mid-blocks without crossing facilities is a common yet dangerous crossing behavior in China. Due to inadequate protection of jaywalkers’ right-of-way, they often need to navigate through vehicular traffic. In such cases, jaywalkers could make sequential crossing decisions, which usually indicate a more complicated crossing scenario, but have been rarely investigated in existing studies. To fill this research gap, this study examines jaywalkers’ sequential decisions, specially focusing on evading and rushing decisions. Specifically, evading decisions include “decelerating/stopping”, “swerving behind the vehicle”, and “swerving along the vehicle”, while rushing decision refers to the decision of “accelerating to cross first”.Descriptive analysis results reveal that as the decision sequence increases, the proportion of rushing decision significantly increases. Moreover, jaywalkers who previously made rushing decisions tend to maintain an accelerating status in the next jaywalker-vehicle interaction and continue making rushing decisions. Furthermore, a grouped random parameters multinomial logit model is employed to capture significant influencing factors of sequential decisions. Model results suggest that aggressive vehicle statuses, including accelerating or maintaining a constant speed, are associated with a higher probability of evading decisions. Conversely, conservative vehicle statuses, such as decelerating, stopping or swerving, are associated with a higher probability of rushing decisions. Besides, evading jaywalkers exhibit greater tolerance for close jaywalker-vehicle spatial proximity, while rushing jaywalkers require larger jaywalker-vehicle distances. Additionally, when interacting with non-motor vehicles, jaywalkers could tolerate closer proximity. We further provide practical implications to help with predicting jaywalkers’ crossing decisions and improving pedestrian safety at mid-blocks without crossing facilities.