Analysis of distracted pedestrians' waiting time: Head-Mounted Immersive Virtual Reality application
This addresses pedestrian safety by quantifying how smartphone distraction impacts crossing behavior, though it is incremental as it applies existing methods to a specific domain.
This study analyzed how distraction affects pedestrians' waiting time before crossing roads, comparing no distraction, smartphone distraction, and smartphone distraction with virtual flashing lights as a safety measure. Results showed that factors like higher initial walk speed and more head orientation toward the smartphone during crossing led to shorter waiting times, while more head orientation toward the smartphone during waiting increased waiting times.
This paper analyzes the distracted pedestrians' waiting time before crossing the road in three conditions: 1) not distracted, 2) distracted with a smartphone and 3) distracted with a smartphone in the presence of virtual flashing LED lights on the crosswalk as a safety measure. For the means of data collection, we adapted an in-house developed virtual immersive reality environment (VIRE). A total of 42 volunteers participated in the experiment. Participants' positions and head movements were recorded and used to calculate walking speeds, acceleration and deceleration rates, surrogate safety measures, time spent playing smartphone game, etc. After a descriptive analysis on the data, the effects of these variables on pedestrians' waiting time are analyzed by employing a cox proportional hazard model. Several factors were identified as having impact on waiting time. The results show that an increase in initial walk speed, percentage of time the head was oriented toward smartphone during crossing, bigger minimum missed gaps and unsafe crossings resulted in shorter waiting times. On the other hand, an increase in the percentage of time the head was oriented toward smartphone during waiting time, crossing time and maze solving time, means longer waiting times for participants.