This paper deals with the relation between pedestrian behavior and the physical environment, and quantitatively clarifies the effect of the number of people and gender on pedestrian behavior. The pedestrian's walking behavior in avoiding an obstacle was recorded on a video tape, and the chosen path was analyzed by using the digital image processing technique. We referred to the distance between a point of starting avoiding maneuver and a point of a standing obstacle as Sx. Sx was measured for each pedestrian. The results are summarized as follows: In the case of males, there is no effect dependent on the number of people. Regarding Sx, the female's Sx is smaller than that of the male. But in the case of females , there are differences among individuals. This characteristic is remarkable when individual female pedestrians are compared with female groups. On the other hand, it is estimated that the female is more susceptible to the effect of an obstacle than the male, judging from the walking track in Sx. No matter what the pedestrians gender or grouping is, Sx is smaller in the case of a non-animate object as an obstacle than in the case of a forward-looking, stationary pedestrian.
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