42-47 Van Houten Feature

ITE JOURNAL / JULY 2001 A GOOD DEAL OF EVIDENCE suggests that driver inattention is a major cause of motor-vehicle crashes. When drivers do not attend to critical features of the driving environment, they cannot respond in a timely manner to threats. One way to alert drivers to the presence of potential threats is the use of flashing yellow warning beacons. However, this type of signal does not provide specific information about the nature or direction of the threat nor does it request specific action on the part of the driver. One study that examined the effect of yellow flashing beacons at midblock crosswalks reported only small increases in motorist yielding behavior.1 Previous research has demonstrated that adding animated “eyes” that scan from side to side at the start of the WALK signal can increase pedestrians’ observing behavior and decrease conflicts between pedestrians and turning vehicles.2 Benefits were sustained over six months, suggesting they were not merely novelty effects. It is also possible to employ the animated eyes display to signal a motorist to look for a particular threat, and the animated eyes display can be supplemented with a symbol representing the threat to which the driver should attend (e.g., pedestrian, vehicle, bicycle, trolley, etc.). Such a signal could be further enhanced by providing information on the direction of the threat by only illuminating a symbol of the threat on the appropriate side of the eyes display. Such an intelligent transportation systems (ITS) sign displays the nature of the threat, the direction of the threat and instructs the motorist to look in the direction of the threat. Indoor parking-garage exits and midblock crosswalks that traverse multilane roads are two locations where such an ITS device could prove helpful to motorists. At parking-garage exits, drivers often have poor visibility of pedestrians approaching on the sidewalk in front of them, and many pedestrians are struck at these locations.3 Pedestrians at midblock crosswalks are less conspicuous than at intersections, which increases the risk of multiple-threat crashes.4 In a multiple-threat crash, a pedestrian is struck when vehicle(s) having yielded to the pedestrian, block the vision of motorists approaching in the next lane of traffic. The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of an ITS signal that included animated eyes and pedestrian symbols at a garage exit with limited visibility and to compare the ITS signal with an animated-eyes display with an ITS flashing beacon at a midblock-crosswalk location.