Use of a Mixed Reality Pedestrian Simulator for Assessment of Child-Pedestrians' Crossing Skills in Complex Scenes

Road crashes involving pedestrians in general and children in particular have become an epidemic in the modern world. Child-pedestrians, especially those in the age range of 5-to 9-years, are over-represented in fatal and severe injury road crashes, despite lower levels of exposure to traffic compared to adults. The present research investigated child and adult pedestrians’ perception of hazards in complex road and traffic situations utilizing a crossing decision task. Twenty-one adults (20-27 years-old) and twenty-five young-children (eight 7-9-year-olds, five 9-10-year-olds and twelve 10-13-year-olds) were requested to observe complex traffic-scene scenarios presented in a mixed reality dynamic environment simulating a typical Israeli city from a pedestrian’s perspective, and to press a response button whenever they assumed it was safe to cross. Results have shown that both the 9-10-year-olds and the 10-13-year-olds presented less decisive performance compared to the experienced-adult pedestrians and the 7-9-year-olds. Compared to previous findings from more simple road crossing configurations, it has been noted that most of the participants, regardless of age, relate more to the approaching vehicles and presence of zebra crossing while refraining from addressing road configuration. The research utilized an innovative paradigm for examining child-pedestrians’ conceptions concerning road-crossing situations. Understanding child-pedestrians' shortcomings in evaluating traffic situations may contribute to the effort of producing intervention techniques which may increase their awareness to potential hazards and pave the way for reducing their over-involvement in road crashes. Conclusions and implications for training novice road users will be discussed.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AND30 Simulation and Measurement of Vehicle and Operator Performance. Alternate title: Use of Mixed Reality Pedestrian Simulator for Assessment of Child-Pedestrian Crossing Skills in Complex Scenes
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Meir, Anat
  • Tapiro, Hagai
  • Parmet, Yisrael
  • Oron-Gilad, Tal
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 18p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Abilities; Adolescents; Children; Novices; Pedestrian movement; Pedestrian safety; Pedestrian vehicle crashes; Perception; Training simulators; Zebra crossings
• Uncontrolled Terms: Mixed reality
• Subject Areas: Highways; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01515307
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-1914
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 21 2014 3:18PM