Modeling pedestrians’ subjective danger perception toward personal mobility vehicles

Abstract

Personal mobility vehicles (PMVs) are gaining popularity as an eco-friendly transport mode for short-distance trips in urban environments. These vehicles can provide numerous economic, environmental, and social benefits and are likely to become more common in urban spaces in the near future. Before permitting them in shared environments, the impacts of the PMVs on the other users of the shared space should be properly evaluated, particularly from a safety perspective.This study focuses on pedestrians’ danger perception toward PMVs interacting with them in shared spaces. To estimate the perceived danger, a model was developed. The developed model is inspired by the social-force concept, and it estimates a safety index called subjective danger index (SDI). The model is then calibrated with data collected through controlled laboratory experiments.The experiments revealed two important features of the pedestrians’ subjective danger perception against PMVs. First, the pedestrians' sensitivity to the distance between a PMV and them is higher when the PMV is in front of them compared to when it is behind them. Secondly, pedestrians perceive a PMV in front of them as more dangerous compared to a PMV behind them when they are near the PMV, although they perceive higher danger when a PMV is approaching from behind them compared to when a PMV is approaching from the front of them when they are relatively far from the PMV. The calibration results demonstrate that the enhanced model can accurately capture such trends and therefore the perception of danger.A case study that uses experimental trajectory data from a PMV–pedestrian interaction situation is also presented to clarify potential applications, characteristics, and limitations of the calibrated SDI model.