Hey, watch where you’re going! An on-road study of driver scanning failures towards pedestrians and cyclists

Abstract

The safety of Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs), such as pedestrians and cyclists, is a serious public health concern, especially at urban intersections. A major reason for vehicle-VRU collisions is driver attentional errors. Prior studies suggest that cross-modal transportation experiences (e.g., being a driver who also cycles) improve visual attention allocation toward VRUs. However, these studies were conducted in simulators or in a laboratory, limiting their generalizability to real world driving. We utilized an instrumented vehicle equipped with eye tracking technology to examine (a) the prevalence of drivers’ visual scanning failures toward VRUs at real intersections and (b) whether there is an effect of cycling experience on this prevalence. Twenty-six experienced drivers (13 cyclists and 13 non-cyclists), between the ages of 35 and 54, completed 18 different turns at urban Toronto intersections, for which gaze and video data were utilized to determine drivers’ visual scanning failures towards areas where conflicting VRUs could approach. Among the 443 unique turn events, 25% were identified as having a visual scanning failure. Results from a mixed effects logit model showed that the odds of committing visual scanning failures towards VRUs during a turning maneuver at an intersection were 2.01 times greater for drivers without cycling experience compared to drivers with cycling experience. Given that our participants represented a low crash-risk age group, this study suggests that the rate at which VRUs are unattended to may be much higher.