Empirical Analysis of Pedestrian Mental Load and Yield Behavior on Two-stage Crosswalk

Abstract

This study revealed pedestrian safety, ease of crossing and mental load at two-stage crosswalk on basic section by field survey. The field survey is consisted not only the observation survey by video camera recorders but also walk experiment with heart rate meter at 4 sites. First we analyzed the heartbeat interval data and made a comparison between the mental load of the edge of crosswalk and that of the median refuge island. As a result, it is found that the mental load for waiting at the refuge island is not so high as compared to that for waiting at the edge of crosswalk. Second we analyzed the vehicles’ yielding movements for crossing pedestrian near at crosswalk. It is shown that the proportion of yielding behavior at two-stage crosswalk is higher than that of normal crosswalk. Furthermore, we conducted statistical analyses for the yielding behaviors. It is revealed that the proportion of yielding behavior is high at near-side of two-stage crosswalk and in case of the wider median refuge island. On the other hand, the higher approach speed is, the lower proportion of yielding behavior is.