Investigating pedestrian crossing decision with autonomous cars in virtual reality

Abstract

With the development of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology, understanding how pedestrians interact with AVs is of increasing importance. In most field studies on pedestrian crossing behavior when encountering AVs, pedestrians were not permitted to physically cross the street due to safety restrictions. Instead, the physical crossing experience was replaced with indirect methods (e.g., by signalizing with gestures). We hypothesized that this lack of a physical crossing experience could influence the participants’ crossing behavior. To test this hypothesis, we adapted a reference study and constructed a crossing facility using a virtual reality (VR) simulation. In a controlled experiment, the participants encountered iterations of oncoming AVs. For each interaction, they were asked to either cross the street or signify their crossing decisions by taking steps at the edge of the street without crossing.Our study reveals that the lack of a physical crossing can lead to a significantly lower measured critical gap and perceived stress levels, thus indicating the need for detailed analysis when indirect methods are applied for future field studies.Practical Relevance: Due to safety requirements, experiments will continue to measure participants’ crossing behavior without permitting them to physically walk in front of an oncoming vehicle. Our study was the first attempt to reveal how this lack of crossing could potentially affect pedestrians’ behavior, and we obtained empirical evidence in support of our hypothesis, thus providing insights for future studies.