Risk Evaluation Index of Low-Speed Vehicle Driving on Pedestrian Spaces

Abstract

Although understanding the risk factors with suitable evaluation indices is useful in order to improve the safety of vehicle driving, there is no evaluation index for low-speed vehicles on pedestrian spaces. Because the characteristics of pedestrian spaces as driving environment is different from that of roadway for automobiles, we do not directly use the existing evaluation indices proposed in research field of automobiles. Therefore, we constructed an evaluation index for low-speed vehicles driving on pedestrian spaces. At first, we compared the characteristics of the driving situations of existing indices to that of our target situation, and proposed the evaluation index “Ellipse-Mapped Relative Risk”. Next, we confirmed the characteristics of proposed index by simulation and experiment. From the results of simulation, EMRR’s ability to evaluate the apparent risk in various driving situations was confirmed. On the other hand, from the results of experiment, consistency for the risk perception of the drivers was confirmed. At last, with the proposed evaluation index, a risk effect of pedestrians was partly confirmed as the first step of understanding the risk mechanisms.