Pedestrians' perception of road crossing while interacting with Automated Vehicles: A Virtual Reality experiment: Pedestrians' perception of road crossing while interacting with Automated Vehicles

Automated Vehicles (AVs) are being developed with the aim to improve road safety, especially that of vulnerable road users. Thus, it is necessary to understand how they perceive AVs in different contexts. We used Virtual Reality (VR) to study pedestrian-AV interactions on road crossings and whether they adapted their behaviour
with repeated exposure. The VR scenarios consisted of varying types of AV, road gradients, distances between AV and the pedestrian and weather conditions. We employed a longitudinal design for the study and explored the effect of time pressure on road crossing decisions. After each road-crossing scenario, participants were asked to answer a bespoke questionnaire. The questions aimed to capture pedestrians’ self-reported behaviour and road-crossing decisions. The multi-level mixed effect model revealed significant differences between the genders, e.g., women participants perceived 81.43% more risks in crossing scenarios than men. Women were more critical of their road-use behaviours; they thought they made unsafe decisions 80.2% more than men. A novel finding was that pedestrians felt it was more dangerous (>62%) to cross a road when
the AV approached in a downhill movement compared to an uphill movement. We suggest that women should be the focus of initiatives to make them more familiar with AVs. Women can be asked to join demonstrations on AV capabilities to reinforce personal and societal acceptance towards AVs. Furthermore, the findings about the environmental factors that significantly influence pedestrians perception of safety will help program AV’s yielding behaviour. For example, AVs can have greater stopping distances when they move downhill.