Examination of the content of in-train announcements to encourage passengers to evacuate quickly and in the correct direction

-An incident involving a suspicious person appeared on a train-

Abstract

If a suspicious person appears on a train and an initial evacuation within the train is required, passengers in distant carriages can evacuate quickly by hearing an announcement over the car's public address system. This allows the evacuation routes for passengers near the suspicious person to be secured. In this study, we created in-car announcements with varying levels of detail regarding “evacuation reasons” and “evacuation locations/directions,” and conducted online survey to examine how passengers responded to the announcements. The results showed that passengers had a better understanding of the situation when “evacuation reasons” was announced in detail. However, even when “evacuation reasons” was not specified, passengers were able to evacuate quickly and in the correct direction by providing the detailed instructions on the “evacuation locations/directions”, which were based on the train’s travelling direction.