Research of informativeness and parameters of pedestrian traffic on unregulated pedestrian crossings

Abstract

The article considers the issues of increasing the safety of pedestrians on regulated and unregulated pedestrian crossings. It is revealed that underestimation of human factor significantly reduces the safety of the “driver”, “pedestrian”, “vehicle”, “road” and “environment” system. The scheme of situation of the closedvisibility on the road in front of the unregulated pedestrian crossing is considered. As a result of theoretical research, a functional model of additional informing of drivers about the presence of pedestrians on pedestrian crossings, their number and direction of movement has been formed. Variants of functioning modesof technical means of additional informing of drivers at pedestrian crossings with the purpose of increasing the information field pertinence are suggested. Two conceptual models suggesting the means to improve the quality of informing of drivers about the presence of pedestrians, firstly, by introducing additional information systems in the form of electronic display with accompanying pedestrian “creeping line”showing direction of movement; secondly, with the help of “pictogram”indicating at presence of pedestrians, their number and direction of movement. As a result of the research, the factors taken as the basis for the experiment were determined, such as speed of the pedestrian and the vehicle, direction and vigour of pedestrian’s movement. The experimental procedure, mathematical model and stage-by-stage processing of experiment parameters are described. It has been experimentally established that more dangerous situations are those where the pedestrian moves onthe left of the vehicle’s path of motion, since the expected collision due to limited visibilityoccurs at lower speeds as compared to the same parameters for pedestrian movement on the right. It is determined that when a pedestrian appears on the left, the collisionis already expected at vehicle speed of 12.04 m/s, and only at 14.6 m/s when it appears on the right. The difference in the stopping distance was 5.5 m behind the collision site, while observing vehicle speed of 14.6 m/s in case of a pedestrian appearing on the left.