Signs and Pedestrian Safety in Automated Transportation Systems

Abstract

Motor-vehicle accidents have caused many safety concerns ever since cars have been on the road. With the implementation of cooperative and automated vehicles (CAVs) merging into the current crosswalks, signals, and concrete rules, the vehicle-pedestrian interactions create noteworthy safety issues. Through observational findings, intersections with higher signage and pedestrian signals had less likely of a chance for pedestrians to run into an altercation when compared to intersections with just crosswalks and no pedestrian signals. This research presents an optimization framework and an analytical solution with field observations to study whether the implementation of more pedestrian signals could have a great effect on vehicle/pedestrian incidents. The research implements the integrated methods of case studies, modeling and simulation using mathematical and statistical software on correlations and probabilities. This study adds minimal interference to the observations as they naturally occur. The study setting is non-contrived and maintained as natural environment. The collected data is continuous time series and measured using Chi-Square for analysis. After the identification of possible interactions between CAVs and pedestrians based on the data surveyed around the Illinois State University (ISU), this study finds that the safety of pedestrian relies on the intersection design of signs and signals more than the intelligence of CAVs (significance level = 95%). This paper also discusses law enforcement and autonomous driving as a means of lowering pedestrian incidents at intersections. The developed mathematical analysis model and simulations help to verify the influences of transportation signs and intersection designs. The investigation innovatively demonstrates the feasibilities of different methods to protect the pedestrian safety while they enter intersections. The findings from this research can provide decision support for future transportation design and implementation rules of CAVs.