Pedestrian Gap Acceptance Logit Model in Unsignalized Crosswalks Conflict Zone

Pedestrians are the most vulnerable road users. For evaluating and modifying pedestrian safety in unsignalized crosswalks, the first important issue is to identify and explore factors affecting the interaction behavior of pedestrians and vehicles in conflict areas. By analyzing those factors and determining how they affect road users behavior, we can represent the plans and procedures to promote awareness and safety of both pedestrians and drivers. The goal of this article is to study pedestrian decision making behavior in unsignalized crosswalks and to determine factors affecting the crossing behavior in conflict areas. The supposed goal of this study was assessing how each factor can influence pedestrian-vehicle conflict behavior by means of developing logistic regression models. This work explores a variety of factors that may impact the gap acceptance behavior of pedestrian to provide a promising decision model. Discrete choice (probit) models of the gap acceptance decision are estimated from observations of pedestrians behavior when crossing at conflict zone. Analysis results show that variables like vehicle speed change (VSC), pedestrian distance to vehicle lane (PDV), pedestrian age (PA) and vehicle position to the start point of pedestrian (Vp) are effective in Pedestrian gap Acceptance (PGA). Modeling decision making behavior by logit models, resulted in neglected R Square of 0.882 and correct classification of 94.9 pair wise cases. Area under ROC curve resulted in 0.98 that means the reliability of models is extracted. The results also showed that some variables like vehicle type (VT), waiting time (WT), number of pedestrians walking in a group (PN) and Gap or Lag are not effective in decision making logit models.