Rethinking infrastructure design: Evaluating pedestrians and VRUs' psychophysiological and behavioral responses to different roadway designs

TL;DR

This study uses immersive virtual environments to evaluate how different roadway designs affect pedestrians' psychophysiological and behavioral responses, revealing discrepancies between subjective safety perceptions and objective measures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel VR-based method for assessing infrastructure impacts on vulnerable road users, combining psycho-physiological and behavioral data for comprehensive analysis.

Findings

Flashing beacons increase subjective safety ratings.

Smartphone app and flashing beacon elicit similar crossing behaviors.

Smartphone app reduces stress levels despite limited user familiarity.

Abstract

The integration of human-centric approaches has gained more attention recently due to more automated systems being introduced into our built environments (buildings, roads, vehicles, etc.), which requires a correct understanding of how humans perceive such systems and respond to them. This paper introduces an Immersive Virtual Environment-based method to evaluate the infrastructure design with psycho-physiological and behavioral responses from the vulnerable road users, especially for pedestrians. A case study of pedestrian mid-block crossings with three crossing infrastructure designs (painted crosswalk, crosswalk with flashing beacons, and a smartphone app for connected vehicles) are tested. Results from 51 participants indicate there are differences between the subjective and objective measurement. A higher subjective safety rating is reported for the flashing beacon design, while the psychophysiological and behavioral data indicate that the flashing beacon and smartphone app are similar in terms of crossing behaviors, eye tracking measurements, and heart rate. In addition, the smartphone app scenario appears to have a lower stress level as indicated by eye tracking data, although many participants don't have prior experience with it. Suggestions are made for the implementation of new technologies, which can increase public acceptance of new technologies and pedestrian safety in the future.