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Sample records for accidentally kills pedestrian

  1. In pedestrian crashes, it's vehicle speed that matters the most

    Science.gov (United States)

    2000-05-13

    A recently prepared report on pedestrian injuries provides these two main findings: 1) regardless of age, pedestrians involved in crashes are more likely to be killed as vehicle speeds increase; and 2) in crashes at any speed, older pedestrians are m...

  2. Increased neurofibrillary tangles in the brains of older pedestrians killed in traffic accidents.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gorrie, C A; Rodriguez, M; Sachdev, P; Duflou, J; Waite, P M E

    2006-01-01

    Older people are over-represented in pedestrian fatalities, and it has been suggested that the presence of cognitive impairment or dementia in these individuals may contribute to their accidents. Using neuropathological methods, we aimed to compare the prevalence of dementia pathology in fatally injured older pedestrians with similarly aged ambulatory subjects who died from other causes. The brains of 52 pedestrians (65-93 years) and 52 controls (65-92 years) were assessed for neurofibrillary tangles (NFT), neuritic plaques, Lewy bodies and vascular lesions using established neuropathological criteria. The examination for Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology showed that 43% of the pedestrians had NFT scores of III-VI using Braak and Braak staging, compared with 23% of the controls (p vascular dementia or dementia with Lewy bodies. These results suggest that cognitive decline associated with AD, even in the earliest stages of the disease, may be a factor in fatal traffic accidents for older pedestrians. Special measures for pedestrian safety are necessary in areas with high densities of older citizens and especially for those diagnosed as having a mild cognitive impairment or AD.

  3. Influence of pedestrian age and gender on spatial and temporal distribution of pedestrian crashes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Toran Pour, Alireza; Moridpour, Sara; Tay, Richard; Rajabifard, Abbas

    2018-01-02

    Every year, about 1.24 million people are killed in traffic crashes worldwide and more than 22% of these deaths are pedestrians. Therefore, pedestrian safety has become a significant traffic safety issue worldwide. In order to develop effective and targeted safety programs, the location- and time-specific influences on vehicle-pedestrian crashes must be assessed. The main purpose of this research is to explore the influence of pedestrian age and gender on the temporal and spatial distribution of vehicle-pedestrian crashes to identify the hotspots and hot times. Data for all vehicle-pedestrian crashes on public roadways in the Melbourne metropolitan area from 2004 to 2013 are used in this research. Spatial autocorrelation is applied in examining the vehicle-pedestrian crashes in geographic information systems (GIS) to identify any dependency between time and location of these crashes. Spider plots and kernel density estimation (KDE) are then used to determine the temporal and spatial patterns of vehicle-pedestrian crashes for different age groups and genders. Temporal analysis shows that pedestrian age has a significant influence on the temporal distribution of vehicle-pedestrian crashes. Furthermore, men and women have different crash patterns. In addition, results of the spatial analysis shows that areas with high risk of vehicle-pedestrian crashes can vary during different times of the day for different age groups and genders. For example, for those between ages 18 and 65, most vehicle-pedestrian crashes occur in the central business district (CBD) during the day, but between 7:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., crashes among this age group occur mostly around hotels, clubs, and bars. This research reveals that temporal and spatial distributions of vehicle-pedestrian crashes vary for different pedestrian age groups and genders. Therefore, specific safety measures should be in place during high crash times at different locations for different age groups and genders to

  4. Experiment for dose measurement during beam killing at Indus-1 synchrotron radiation source

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nayak, M.K.; Dev, Vipin; Haridas, G.; Thakkar, K.K.; Sarkar, P.K.; Sharma, D.N.

    2006-01-01

    Experimental measurement of radiation dose likely to be received by an occupational worker in the experimental hall of Indus-1 during accidental beam killing was carried out. Various accidental beam-killing scenarios were experimentally simulated for the measurement. The measurement was carried out using direct reading dosimeters. Result shows that in the event of accidental beam killing, dose likely to be received by an occupational worker outside the shield is negligible. (author)

  5. Study design and analysis of automobile bumper for pedestrian safety

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kulkarni, Akash; Vora, Rushabh; Ravi, K.

    2017-11-01

    This paper aims to design and analyse the bumper beam structure, in order to ensure the protection of the pedestrians along with the occupants inside the vehicle. The concern shown towards the pedestrian safety is because, each year about 2,70,000 pedestrians are killed in road accidents that accounts to 22% of the total deaths. From the literature review, it was inferred that the mounting position of bumper and material selection play a crucial role in maximising the pedestrian safety. Hence in this paper, the effects of bumper mounting position and the bumper beam material have been studied, with reference to an explicit dynamic collision involving with a dummy human lower leg set-up. The acceptance of a particular mounting position/material was based on the fact that the maximum stress and deformation induced were less than the yield limits of the human leg form structure (representing the skin, femur and tibia).

  6. Creating pedestrian crash scenarios in a driving simulator environment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chrysler, Susan T; Ahmad, Omar; Schwarz, Chris W

    2015-01-01

    In 2012 in the United States, pedestrian injuries accounted for 3.3% of all traffic injuries but, disproportionately, pedestrian fatalities accounted for roughly 14% of traffic-related deaths (NHTSA 2014 ). In many other countries, pedestrians make up more than 50% of those injured and killed in crashes. This research project examined driver response to crash-imminent situations involving pedestrians in a high-fidelity, full-motion driving simulator. This article presents a scenario development method and discusses experimental design and control issues in conducting pedestrian crash research in a simulation environment. Driving simulators offer a safe environment in which to test driver response and offer the advantage of having virtual pedestrian models that move realistically, unlike test track studies, which by nature must use pedestrian dummies on some moving track. An analysis of pedestrian crash trajectories, speeds, roadside features, and pedestrian behavior was used to create 18 unique crash scenarios representative of the most frequent and most costly crash types. For the study reported here, we only considered scenarios where the car is traveling straight because these represent the majority of fatalities. We manipulated driver expectation of a pedestrian both by presenting intersection and mid-block crossing as well as by using features in the scene to direct the driver's visual attention toward or away from the crossing pedestrian. Three visual environments for the scenarios were used to provide a variety of roadside environments and speed: a 20-30 mph residential area, a 55 mph rural undivided highway, and a 40 mph urban area. Many variables of crash situations were considered in selecting and developing the scenarios, including vehicle and pedestrian movements; roadway and roadside features; environmental conditions; and characteristics of the pedestrian, driver, and vehicle. The driving simulator scenarios were subjected to iterative testing to

  7. Influence of children pedestrian behaviour on pedestrian space usage

    Science.gov (United States)

    Makalew, F. P.; Adisasmita, S. A.; Wunas, S.; Hamid, S.

    2017-11-01

    School children pedestrian behaviour can be seen along their journey to and from school. Pedestrian spaces used by children are places available in urban and rural areas including streets with and without pedestrian pathways. Samples data are collected from 23 elementary schools in urban and rural areas in North Sulawesi, Indonesia in the form of video records and photos taken. The aim of this research is to analyse children pedestrian behaviour and its influence on the space usage on pedestrian areas. Method of analysis is a comparative study on urban and rural areas. Results of this research are types of behaviour, factors that influence the behaviour, physical condition of pedestrian areas and space usage by children. The behaviours are duck-line walking, running, playing, walking backward and walking with bare foot in which running is the main behaviour. These behaviours are influenced by factors including following friends and responding to acts. There are similarities and differences between pedestrian space usage in urban and rural areas. Space use by children pedestrian demonstrates the way pedestrian areas should be planned. Space usage by children pedestrian indicates that there is a need of evaluation of the space available considering pedestrian children behaviour.

  8. Reduciendo el trauma y la mortalidad asociada a los accidentes de tránsito en los peatones en el Perú: intervenciones que pueden funcionar Reducing pedestrian deaths and injuries due to road traffic injuries in Peru: interventions that can work

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    D. Alex Quistberg

    2010-06-01

    Full Text Available Los peatones peruanos se constituyen como el grupo que sufre la mayor proporción de fatalidades causadas por los accidentes de tránsito en el mundo. El año 2009 los peatones fueron involucrados en 27% de los accidentes de tránsito en el Perú. Este es un problema significativo para la salud pública del país, pues tiene repercusiones económicas importantes. En este artículo se revisa la evidencia disponible para algunas intervenciones implementadas en otros países y enfocadas a la prevención de los atropellos, las que podrían funcionar bien en Perú. De manera consistente, la implementación de intervenciones tales como el calmar el tráfico en áreas específicas a través de reductores de velocidad ("rompemuelles", minirotondas ("óvalos", mejor alumbramiento, calles unidireccionales, desvíos y bloqueos de las calles, tiene una fuerte evidencia en reducir las lesiones y fatalidades en los peatones. Otras intervenciones vinculadas con actividades de educación y hacer cumplir las leyes, podrían tener una función en contextos muy específicos, sin embargo, diseñar y modificar el medio ambiente físico se constituye como una de las intervenciones más importantes.Pedestrians in Peru are the victims of the greatest proportion of road traffic fatalities in the world. In 2009, pedestrians were involved in 27% of road traffic incidents in Peru. This is a significant public health problem in Peru and it has important economic effects as well. We review the evidence for some of the solutions and interventions implemented in other countries that may work well in Peru to confront this problem via preventing pedestrian-vehicle incidents. Most importantly, deploying interventions such as area-wide traffic calming through speed bumps, roundabouts, better lighting, one-way streets, detours, and blocking some roads has the strongest evidence for reducing injuries and fatalities in pedestrians. Other interventions related to education and

  9. Vehicle-pedestrian collisions - Aspects regarding pedestrian kinematics, dynamics and biomechanics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Petrescu, L.; Petrescu, Al

    2017-10-01

    Vehicle-pedestrian collisions result in a substantial number of pedestrian fatalities and injuries worldwide. Concern continues to limit and reduce the tragic consequences suffered by pedestrians involved in road accidents, caused the vehicle-pedestrian accident reconstruction become an important area and distinctly outlined in the reconstruction of road incidents involving vehicle. This paper analyzes the dynamics of vehicle-pedestrian impact influence over pedestrian biomechanics, which is directly connected with the severity of injury after contact with the vehicle profile and with the place where the pedestrian is projected. The main goal of this paper is to highlight some features of reconstruction of road accidents involving pedestrian, looking at the kinematics and dynamics of pedestrian impact for a better understanding of the phenomena that occur. The study on the dynamics and biomechanics of the pedestrian hit by the vehicle is useful in order to understand how the injuries, including the lethal ones, are generated in the collision, what is essential in road accidents reconstruction.

  10. Kinematic responses and injuries of pedestrian in car-pedestrian collisions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Teng, T. L.; Liang, C. C.; Hsu, C. Y.; Tai, S. F.

    2017-10-01

    How to protect pedestrians and reduce the collision injury has gradually become the new field of automotive safety research and focus in the world. Many engineering studies have appeared and their purpose is trying to reduce the pedestrian injuries caused by traffic accident. The physical model involving impactor model and full scale pedestrian model are costly when taking the impact test. This study constructs a vehicle-pedestrian collision model by using the MADYMO. To verify the accuracy of the proposed vehicle-pedestrian collision model, the experimental data are used in the pedestrian model test. The proposed model also will be applied to analyze the kinematic responses and injuries of pedestrian in collisions in this study. The modeled results can help assess the pedestrian friendliness of vehicles and assist in the future development of pedestrian friendliness vehicle technologies.

  11. Pedestrian-vehicle crashes and analytical techniques for stratified contingency tables.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Al-Ghamdi, Ali S

    2002-03-01

    In 1999 there were 450 fatalities due to road crashes in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, of which 130 were pedestrians. Hence, every fourth person killed on the roads is a pedestrian. The aim of this study is to investigate pedestrian-vehicle crashes in this fast-growing city with two objectives in mind: to analyze pedestrian collisions with regard to their causes, characteristics, location of injury on the victim's body, and most common patterns and to determine the potential for use of the odds ratio technique in the analysis of stratified contingency tables. Data from 638 pedestrian-vehicle crashes reported by police, during the period 1997-1999, were used. A systematic sampling technique was followed in which every third record was used. The analysis showed that the pedestrian fatality rate per 10(5) population is 2.8. The rates were relatively high within the childhood (1-9 years) and young adult (10-19 years) groups, and the old-age groups (60 - > 80 years), which indicate that young as well as the elderly people in this city are more likely to be involved in fatal accidents of this type than are those in other age groups. The analysis revealed that 77.1% of pedestrians were probably struck while crossing a roadway either not in a crosswalk or where no crosswalk existed. In addition, the distribution of injuries on the victims' bodies was determined from hospital records. More than one-third of the fatal injuries were located on the head and chest. An attempt was made to conduct an association analysis between crash severity (i.e. injury or fatal) and some of the study variables using chi-square and odds ratio techniques. The categorical nature of the data helped in using these analytical techniques.

  12. Isolated and Single Pedestrians and Pedestrian Groups on Sidewalks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Francesco Pinna

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available Walking freedom can define the quality of an urban area, but this freedom is conditioned by various factors. The research objective is to study pedestrian behavior on sidewalks. Data are collected during on site surveys by means of concealed camcorders. For each pedestrian many factors are observed, such as gender, age, direction, distractions, transport of objects, etc., which could influence pedestrian behavior. Data processing allows the identification of mathematical models describing the average pedestrian’s behavior, subdivided for user type (isolated, single, group. In general, the mean walking pedestrian speed decreases depending on user type (in a linear manner if age class grows for isolated pedestrians, while with the square of age for other user types, of gender, and of facing type. Models obtained for the different pedestrian types were compared to understand the differences in speeds, underlining that pedestrian interferences play a significant role in defining behavior and, therefore, speed. The results support the idea that, to define a smooth pedestrian speed as an indicator of the “walkability” of a path, in addition to considering the path and user’s characteristics, it is also necessary to define the type of user for which the infrastructure is designed.

  13. "Drone Killings in Principle and in Practice"

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Dige, Morten

    2017-01-01

    to argue that what we see in the real world cases of drone killings is not merely an accidental or contingent use of drone technology. The real life use reflects to a large extent features that are inherent of the dominant drone systems that has been developed to date. What is being imagined "in principle......" is thus to a large extent drone killings in dreamland. I use an historic example as a point of reference and departure: the debate over the lawfulness of nuclear weapons....

  14. Pedestrian signalization and the risk of pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions in Lima, Peru.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Quistberg, D Alex; Koepsell, Thomas D; Boyle, Linda Ng; Miranda, J Jaime; Johnston, Brian D; Ebel, Beth E

    2014-09-01

    Safe walking environments are essential for protecting pedestrians and promoting physical activity. In Peru, pedestrians comprise over three-quarters of road fatality victims. Pedestrian signalization plays an important role managing pedestrian and vehicle traffic and may help improve pedestrian safety. We examined the relationship between pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions and the presence of visible traffic signals, pedestrian signals, and signal timing to determine whether these countermeasures improved pedestrian safety. A matched case-control design was used where the units of study were crossing locations. We randomly sampled 97 control-matched collisions (weighted N=1134) at intersections occurring from October, 2010 to January, 2011 in Lima. Each case-control pair was matched on proximity, street classification, and number of lanes. Sites were visited between February, 2011 and September, 2011. Each analysis accounted for sampling weight and matching and was adjusted for vehicle and pedestrian traffic flow, crossing width, and mean vehicle speed. Collisions were more common where a phased pedestrian signal (green or red-light signal) was present compared to no signalization (odds ratio [OR] 8.88, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] 1.32-59.6). A longer pedestrian-specific signal duration was associated with collision risk (OR 5.31, 95% CI 1.02-9.60 per 15-s interval). Collisions occurred more commonly in the presence of any signalization visible to pedestrians or pedestrian-specific signalization, though these associations were not statistically significant. Signalization efforts were not associated with lower risk for pedestrians; rather, they were associated with an increased risk of pedestrian-vehicle collisions. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  15. Pedestrian injury causation study (pedestrian accident typing)

    Science.gov (United States)

    1982-08-01

    A new computerized pedestrian accident typing procedure was tested on 1,997 cases from the Pedestrian Injury Causation Study (PICS). Two coding procedures were used to determine the effects of quantity and quality of information on accident typing ac...

  16. Pedestrian and motorists' actions at pedestrian hybrid beacon sites: findings from a pilot study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pulugurtha, Srinivas S; Self, Debbie R

    2015-01-01

    This paper focuses on an analysis of pedestrian and motorists' actions at sites with pedestrian hybrid beacons and assesses their effectiveness in improving the safety of pedestrians. Descriptive and statistical analyses (one-tail two-sample T-test and two-proportion Z-test) were conducted using field data collected during morning and evening peak hours at three study sites in the city of Charlotte, NC, before and after the installation of pedestrian hybrid beacons. Further, an analysis was conducted to assess the change in pedestrian and motorists' actions over time (before the installation; 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months after the installation). Results showed an increase in average traffic speed at one of the pedestrian hybrid beacon sites while no specific trends were observed at the other two pedestrian hybrid beacon sites. A decrease in the number of motorists not yielding to pedestrians, pedestrians trapped in the middle of the street, and pedestrian-vehicle conflicts were observed at all the three pedestrian hybrid beacon sites. The installation of pedestrian hybrid beacons did not have a negative effect on pedestrian actions at two out of the three sites. Improvements seem to be relatively more consistent 3 months after the installation of the pedestrian hybrid beacon.

  17. FUNGSI DAN PERAN JALUR PEDESTRIAN BAGI PEJALAN KAKI Sebuah Studi Banding Terhadap Fungsi Pedestrian

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lily Mauliani

    2010-07-01

    Full Text Available ABSTRAK. Jalur pedestrian pada sebuah kota adalah bagian yang sangat penting, baik sebagai kelengkapan (amenity kota maupun sebagai tempat orang berjalan kaki dengan aman dan nyaman. Namun untuk kota Jakarta, dan mungkin juga kota-kota lainnya di Indonesia, pedestrian seringkali mengalami perubahan fungsi tidak hanya sekedar sebagai jalur pejalan kaki namun juga bisa menjadi jalur kendaraan bermotor, area berjualan para pedagang kaki lima yang bersifat mobile, tetapi bisa juga menjadi “ruko” alias rumah toko. Permasalahannya adalah bagaimana nasib para pejalan kaki, dimana mereka dapat berjalan kaki dengan aman, tanpa takut tertabrak pengendara sepeda motor, tersenggol bajay, mikrolet atau mobil pribadi? Pembahasan tentang pedestrian ini dilakukan dengan cara mengamati dan membandingkan antara pedestrian yang ada di Jakarta dan di Singapura, dilihat dari segi fungsi dan penataannya.   Kata kunci : pedestrian, fungsi, pejalan kaki   ABSTRACT. Pedestrian path within the city has been regarded as an important element, either as a city amenity which contribute an aesthetic of city space or as a space for people or pedestrian to walk safely and comfort. Jakarta as one of a big city in Indonesia, has many pedestrian paths within it, but there are many pedestrian paths which have been changed in function. The pedestrian paths are not as a space for people to walk but have been accommodated as motorcycle lines as well as mobile shop or shop-house which has been known as RUKO or rumah toko. The main problem is how people could walk safely and comfort. This discussion of pedestrian paths will be explored in this paper by comparing the function and the design as well as the plan of pedestrian paths in Jakarta and Singapore.   Keywords : pedestrian path, function, pedestrian.

  18. Situations of car-to-pedestrian contact.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Matsui, Yasuhiro; Hitosugi, Masahito; Takahashi, Kunio; Doi, Tsutomu

    2013-01-01

    To reduce the severity of injuries and the number of pedestrian deaths in traffic accidents, active safety devices providing pedestrian detection are considered effective countermeasures. The features of car-to-pedestrian collisions need to be known in detail to develop such safety devices. Because information on real-world accidents is limited, this study investigated near-miss situations captured by drive recorders installed in passenger cars. We showed similarities of the contact situation between near-miss incidents and real-world fatal pedestrian accidents in Japan. We analyzed the near-miss incident data via video capturing pedestrians crossing the road in front of forward-moving cars. Using a video frame captured by a drive recorder, the time to collision (TTC) was calculated from the car velocity and the distance between the car and pedestrian at the moment that the pedestrian initially appeared. The average TTC in the cases where pedestrians were not using a pedestrian crossing was shorter than that in the cases where pedestrians were using a pedestrian crossing. The average TTC in the cases where pedestrians emerged from behind obstructions was shorter than that in the cases where drivers had unobstructed views of the pedestrians. We propose that the specifications of the safety device for pedestrian detection and automatic braking should reflect the severe approach situation for a pedestrian and car including the TTC observed for near-miss incidents.

  19. Pedestrian safety action plan.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2009-06-01

    In 2005, Arizona ranked 5th among states in pedestrian fatalities per 100,000 residents, with 164 : pedestrian fatalities on Arizonas roadwaysa nearly 30 percent increase from 2003 levels. To reduce : the number of pedestrian crashes in Arizona...

  20. Pedestrian Friendly Outdoor Lighting

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Miller, N. J. [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Koltai, R. N. [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); McGowan, T. K. [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)

    2013-12-01

    The GATEWAY program followed two pedestrian-scale lighting projects that required multiple mockups – one at Stanford University in California and the other at Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York. The report provides insight into pedestrian lighting criteria, how they differ from street and area lighting criteria, and how solid-state lighting can be better applied in pedestrian applications.

  1. Pedestrian Safety in Road Traffic in Poland

    Science.gov (United States)

    Budzynski, Marcin; Jamroz, Kazimierz; Mackun, Tomasz

    2017-10-01

    Every third road accident in Poland involves a pedestrian as a participant or, most of the time, a casualty. Pedestrian accidents are usually the result of complex situations and the outcome of a number of factors related to driver and pedestrian behaviour and road infrastructure. Safety depends largely on how well the traffic condition is perceived and on visibility in traffic. The paper presents the results of analyses of methodologies for systematic studies of pedestrian behaviour and pedestrian-driver relations. The effects of the location of the site, type of cross-section and other selected parameters on pedestrian and driver behaviour are demonstrated. The analyses showed that pedestrians are most often put at risk by too long pedestrian crossings, vehicles going too fast around pedestrian crossings, lack of proper sight distance and poorly lit or unlit pedestrian crossings. The reason for such defective infrastructure is that planners, designers, contractors and maintenance services are not receiving any support from design, marking and maintenance regulations for pedestrian traffic. In addition, the Road Traffic Law is not restrictive enough when it comes to drivers’ obligations towards pedestrian safety. Polish design regulations allow long pedestrian crossings up to four lanes in one direction or three lanes in two directions irrespective of traffic control and speed limits. Pedestrian crossings should be kept at a maximum of three lanes. There is nothing in the design regulations about the required driver-pedestrian sight distance. Neither does the Road Traffic Law help engineers with that. It is legal to park vehicles within 10 m of a pedestrian crossing which does not guarantee the necessary sight distance. Drivers must be able to see a pedestrian waiting or stepping onto the crossing from a distance that will help them come to a stop safely. It is safer to follow the principle of providing adequate pedestrian sight distance. Recommendations for

  2. The Crossing Speed of Elderly Pedestrians

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ana Trpković

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available The population of elderly people is rapidly growing and in terms of safety, senior pedestrians represent one of the most vulnerable group. The pedestrian crossing speed is a significant input parameter in traffic engineering, which can have effect on pedestrians’ safety, especially of older population. The objective of this study was to determine the value of the crossing speed of elderly pedestrians (65+ for different types of urban crossings. The research was conducted at ten intersections in the city of Belgrade, Serbia, using the method of direct observation and a questionnaire for collecting data. The data were analysed in the statistical software package IBM SPSS Statistics. The results showed that elderly pedestrians walk slower and the crossing type significantly influenced the speed of older population. The order of crossing types in relation to the measured speed is ranked as follows, from the lowest to the highest speed value: unsignalized, signalized, signalized with pedestrian countdown display, signalized with pedestrian island and pedestrian countdown display and finally signalized crossing with pedestrian island. According to the questionnaire results, the elderly recognize the importance of implementing pedestrian counters. This indicates the necessity to provide safe street crossing for the elderly using the corresponding engineering measures.

  3. Correlation Between Euro NCAP Pedestrian Test Results and Injury Severity in Injury Crashes with Pedestrians and Bicyclists in Sweden.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Strandroth, Johan; Sternlund, Simon; Lie, Anders; Tingvall, Claes; Rizzi, Matteo; Kullgren, Anders; Ohlin, Maria; Fredriksson, Rikard

    2014-11-01

    Pedestrians and bicyclists account for a significant share of deaths and serious injuries in the road transport system. The protection of pedestrians in car-to-pedestrian crashes has therefore been addressed by friendlier car fronts and since 1997, the European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP) has assessed the level of protection for most car models available in Europe. In the current study, Euro NCAP pedestrian scoring was compared with real-life injury outcomes in car-to-pedestrian and car-tobicyclist crashes occurring in Sweden. Approximately 1200 injured pedestrians and 2000 injured bicyclists were included in the study. Groups of cars with low, medium and high pedestrian scores were compared with respect to pedestrian injury severity on the Maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale (MAIS)-level and risk of permanent medical impairment (RPMI). Significant injury reductions to both pedestrians and bicyclists were found between low and high performing cars. For pedestrians, the reduction of MAIS2+, MAIS3+, RPMI1+ and RPMI10+ ranged from 20-56% and was significant on all levels except for MAIS3+ injuries. Pedestrian head injuries had the highest reduction, 80-90% depending on level of medical impairment. For bicyclist, an injury reduction was only observed between medium and high performing cars. Significant injury reductions were found for all body regions. It was also found that cars fitted with autonomous emergency braking including pedestrian detection might have a 60-70% lower crash involvement than expected. Based on these results, it was recommended that pedestrian protection are implemented on a global scale to provide protection for vulnerable road users worldwide.

  4. Prevention of pedestrian accidents.

    OpenAIRE

    Kendrick, D

    1993-01-01

    Child pedestrian accidents are the most common road traffic accident resulting in injury. Much of the existing work on road traffic accidents is based on analysing clusters of accidents despite evidence that child pedestrian accidents tend to be more dispersed than this. This paper analyses pedestrian accidents in 573 children aged 0-11 years by a locally derived deprivation score for the years 1988-90. The analysis shows a significantly higher accident rate in deprived areas and a dose respo...

  5. Concept of an enhanced V2X pedestrian collision avoidance system with a cost function-based pedestrian model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kotte, Jens; Schmeichel, Carsten; Zlocki, Adrian; Gathmann, Hauke; Eckstein, Lutz

    2017-05-29

    State-of-the-art collision avoidance and collision mitigation systems predict the behavior of pedestrians based on trivial models that assume a constant acceleration or velocity. New sources of sensor information-for example, smart devices such as smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.-can support enhanced pedestrian behavior models. The objective of this article is the development and implementation of a V2Xpedestrian collision avoidance system that uses new information sources. A literature review of existing state-of-the-art pedestrian collision avoidance systems, pedestrian behavior models in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and traffic simulations is conducted together with an analysis of existing studies on typical pedestrian patterns in traffic. Based on this analysis, possible parameters for predicting pedestrian behavior were investigated. The results led to new requirements from which a concept was developed and implemented. The analysis of typical pedestrian behavior patterns in traffic situations showed the complexity of predicting pedestrian behavior. Requirements for an improved behavior prediction were derived. A concept for a V2X collision avoidance system, based on a cost function that predicts pedestrian near future presence, and its implementation is presented. The concept presented considers several challenges such as information privacy, inaccuracies of the localization, and inaccuracies of the prediction. A concept for an enhanced V2X pedestrian collision avoidance system was developed and introduced. The concept uses new information sources such as smart devices to improve the prediction of the pedestrian's presence in the near future and considers challenges that come along with the usage of these information sources.

  6. Pedestrian ascent and descent fundamental diagram on stairway

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Juan; Lo, S. M.; Ma, Jian

    2017-08-01

    Due to the interaction among individuals, pedestrian walking speeds in relatively dense crowds when descending and ascending stairs may present different features from a single pedestrian moving freely. Thus, to obtain a large range of densities, a series of single-file pedestrian movement experiments under laboratory conditions were performed. The trends of the fundamental diagram in a wide pedestrian density range for staircase movement are captured. Detailed features of pedestrian speed with the increase of pedestrian density, headway, and the influence of pedestrians’ lateral sway are further discussed. It is found that with the increase of pedestrian density, the speed decrease rate varies. Meanwhile, the decrease of headway, leads to two speed regimes, i.e. free movement and linear constrained movement. We show that pedestrian speed can be described by counting the number of steps separating pedestrians in longitudinal direction. These enrichments can benefit pedestrian modelling and improve the evaluation of the evacuation performance of a staircase.

  7. DATA COLLECTION METHOD FOR PEDESTRIAN MOVEMENT VARIABLES

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hajime Inamura

    2000-01-01

    Full Text Available The need of tools for design and evaluation of pedestrian areas, subways stations, entrance hall, shopping mall, escape routes, stadium etc lead to the necessity of a pedestrian model. One approach pedestrian model is Microscopic Pedestrian Simulation Model. To be able to develop and calibrate a microscopic pedestrian simulation model, a number of variables need to be considered. As the first step of model development, some data was collected using video and the coordinate of the head path through image processing were also taken. Several numbers of variables can be gathered to describe the behavior of pedestrian from a different point of view. This paper describes how to obtain variables from video taking and simple image processing that can represent the movement of pedestrians and its variables

  8. Pedestrian injury mitigation by autonomous braking.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rosén, Erik; Källhammer, Jan-Erik; Eriksson, Dick; Nentwich, Matthias; Fredriksson, Rikard; Smith, Kip

    2010-11-01

    The objective of this study was to calculate the potential effectiveness of a pedestrian injury mitigation system that autonomously brakes the car prior to impact. The effectiveness was measured by the reduction of fatally and severely injured pedestrians. The database from the German In-Depth Accident Study (GIDAS) was queried for pedestrians hit by the front of cars from 1999 to 2007. Case by case information on vehicle and pedestrian velocities and trajectories were analysed to estimate the field of view needed for a vehicle-based sensor to detect the pedestrians one second prior to the crash. The pre-impact braking system was assumed to activate the brakes one second prior to crash and to provide a braking deceleration up to the limit of the road surface conditions, but never to exceed 0.6 g. New impact speeds were then calculated for pedestrians that would have been detected by the sensor. These calculations assumed that all pedestrians who were within a given field of view but not obstructed by surrounding objects would be detected. The changes in fatality and severe injury risks were quantified using risk curves derived by logistic regression of the accident data. Summing the risks for all pedestrians, relationships between mitigation effectiveness, sensor field of view, braking initiation time, and deceleration were established. The study documents that the effectiveness at reducing fatally (severely) injured pedestrians in frontal collisions with cars reached 40% (27%) at a field of view of 40 degrees. Increasing the field of view further led to only marginal improvements in effectiveness. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. Pedestrian Friendly Outdoor Lighting

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Miller, Naomi J. [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Koltai, Rita [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); McGowan, Terry [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)

    2013-12-31

    This GATEWAY report discusses the problems of pedestrian lighting that occur with all technologies with a focus on the unique optical options and opportunities offered by LEDs through the findings from two pedestrian-focused projects, one at Stanford University in California, and one at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York. Incorporating user feedback this report reviews the tradeoffs that must be weighed among visual comfort, color, visibility, efficacy and other factors to stimulate discussion among specifiers, users, energy specialists, and in industry in hopes that new approaches, metrics, and standards can be developed to support pedestrian-focused communities, while reducing energy use.

  10. Detecting New Pedestrian Facilities from VGI Data Sources

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhong, S.; Xie, Z.

    2017-12-01

    Pedestrian facility (e.g. footbridge, pedestrian crossing and underground passage) information is an important basic data of location based service (LBS) for pedestrians. However, timely updating pedestrian facility information challenges due to facilities change frequently. Previous pedestrian facility information collecting and updating tasks are mainly completed by highly trained specialized persons. However, this conventional approach has several disadvantages such as high cost, long update cycle and so on. Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) has proven efficiency to provide new, free and fast growing spatial data. Pedestrian trajectory, which can be seen as measurements of real pedestrian road, is one of the most valuable information of VGI data. Although the accuracy of the trajectories is not too high, due to the large number of measurements, an improvement of quality of the road information can be achieved. Thus, we develop a method for detecting new pedestrian facilities based on the current road network and pedestrian trajectories. Specifically, 1) by analyzing speed, distance and direction, those outliers of pedestrian trajectories are removed, 2) a road network matching algorithm is developed for eliminating redundant trajectories, and 3) a space-time cluster algorithm is adopted for detecting new walking facilities. The performance of the method is evaluated with a series of experiments conducted on a part of the road network of Heifei and a large number of real pedestrian trajectories, and verified the results by using Tencent Street map. The results show that the proposed method is able to detecting new pedestrian facilities from VGI data accurately. We believe that the proposed method provides an alternative way for general road data acquisition, and can improve the quality of LBS for pedestrians.

  11. Biomechanically Excited SMD Model of a Walking Pedestrian

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Zhang, Mengshi; Georgakis, Christos T.; Chen, Jun

    2016-01-01

    Through their biomechanical properties, pedestrians interact with the structures they occupy. Although this interaction has been recognized by researchers, pedestrians' biomechanical properties have not been fully addressed. In this paper, a spring-mass-damper (SMD) system, with a pair of biomech......Through their biomechanical properties, pedestrians interact with the structures they occupy. Although this interaction has been recognized by researchers, pedestrians' biomechanical properties have not been fully addressed. In this paper, a spring-mass-damper (SMD) system, with a pair...... produced the pedestrian's center of mass (COM) trajectories from the captured motion markers. The vertical COM trajectory was approximated to be the pedestrian SMD dynamic responses under the excitation of biomechanical forces. SMD model parameters of a pedestrian for a specific walking frequency were...... estimated from a known walking frequency and the pedestrian's weight, assuming that pedestrians always walk in displacement resonance and retain a constant damping ratio of 0.3. Thus, biomechanical forces were extracted using the measured SMD dynamic responses and the estimated SMD parameters. Extracted...

  12. Dual effects of pedestrian density on emergency evacuation

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ma, Yi, E-mail: yima23-c@my.cityu.edu.hk [School of Transportation and Logistics, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu (China); Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon (Hong Kong); Lee, Eric Wai Ming; Yuen, Richard Kwok Kit [Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon (Hong Kong)

    2017-02-05

    This paper investigates the effect of the pedestrian density in building on the evacuation dynamic with simulation method. In the simulations, both the visibility in building and the exit limit of building are taken into account. The simulation results show that the effect of the pedestrian density in building on the evacuation dynamics is dual. On the one hand, when the visibility in building is very large, the increased pedestrian density plays a negative effect. On the other hand, when the visibility in building is very small, the increased pedestrian density can play a positive effect. The simulation results also show that when both the exit width and visibility are very small, the varying of evacuation time with regard to the pedestrian density is non-monotonous and presents a U-shaped tendency. That is, in this case, too large or too small pedestrian density in building is disadvantageous to the evacuation process. Our findings provide a new insight about the effect of the pedestrian density in building on the evacuation dynamic. - Highlights: • Pedestrian density inside buildings has dual effects on evacuation. • Increased pedestrian density has a negative effect in cases of increased visibility. • Increased pedestrian density has a positive effect in cases of decreased visibility.

  13. Dual effects of pedestrian density on emergency evacuation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ma, Yi; Lee, Eric Wai Ming; Yuen, Richard Kwok Kit

    2017-01-01

    This paper investigates the effect of the pedestrian density in building on the evacuation dynamic with simulation method. In the simulations, both the visibility in building and the exit limit of building are taken into account. The simulation results show that the effect of the pedestrian density in building on the evacuation dynamics is dual. On the one hand, when the visibility in building is very large, the increased pedestrian density plays a negative effect. On the other hand, when the visibility in building is very small, the increased pedestrian density can play a positive effect. The simulation results also show that when both the exit width and visibility are very small, the varying of evacuation time with regard to the pedestrian density is non-monotonous and presents a U-shaped tendency. That is, in this case, too large or too small pedestrian density in building is disadvantageous to the evacuation process. Our findings provide a new insight about the effect of the pedestrian density in building on the evacuation dynamic. - Highlights: • Pedestrian density inside buildings has dual effects on evacuation. • Increased pedestrian density has a negative effect in cases of increased visibility. • Increased pedestrian density has a positive effect in cases of decreased visibility.

  14. Pedestrian recognition using automotive radar sensors

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bartsch, A.; Fitzek, F.; Rasshofer, R. H.

    2012-09-01

    The application of modern series production automotive radar sensors to pedestrian recognition is an important topic in research on future driver assistance systems. The aim of this paper is to understand the potential and limits of such sensors in pedestrian recognition. This knowledge could be used to develop next generation radar sensors with improved pedestrian recognition capabilities. A new raw radar data signal processing algorithm is proposed that allows deep insights into the object classification process. The impact of raw radar data properties can be directly observed in every layer of the classification system by avoiding machine learning and tracking. This gives information on the limiting factors of raw radar data in terms of classification decision making. To accomplish the very challenging distinction between pedestrians and static objects, five significant and stable object features from the spatial distribution and Doppler information are found. Experimental results with data from a 77 GHz automotive radar sensor show that over 95% of pedestrians can be classified correctly under optimal conditions, which is compareable to modern machine learning systems. The impact of the pedestrian's direction of movement, occlusion, antenna beam elevation angle, linear vehicle movement, and other factors are investigated and discussed. The results show that under real life conditions, radar only based pedestrian recognition is limited due to insufficient Doppler frequency and spatial resolution as well as antenna side lobe effects.

  15. Towards an integrated approach of pedestrian behaviour and exposure.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Papadimitriou, Eleonora

    2016-07-01

    In this paper, an integrated methodology for the analysis of pedestrian behaviour and exposure is proposed, allowing to identify and quantify the effect of pedestrian behaviour, road and traffic characteristics on pedestrian risk exposure, for each pedestrian and for populations of pedestrians. The paper builds on existing research on pedestrian exposure, namely the Routledge microscopic indicator, proposes adjustments to take into account road, traffic and human factors and extends the use of this indicator on area-wide level. Moreover, this paper uses integrated choice and latent variables (ICLV) models of pedestrian behaviour, taking into account road, traffic and human factors. Finally, a methodology is proposed for the integrated estimation of pedestrian behaviour and exposure on the basis of road, traffic and human factors. The method is tested with data from a field survey in Athens, Greece, which used pedestrian behaviour observations as well as a questionnaire on human factors of pedestrian behaviour. The data were used (i) to develop ICLV models of pedestrian behaviour and (ii) to estimate the behaviour and exposure of pedestrians for different road, traffic and behavioural scenarios. The results suggest that both pedestrian behaviour and exposure are largely defined by a small number of factors: road type, traffic volume and pedestrian risk-taking. The probability for risk-taking behaviour and the related exposure decrease in less demanding road and traffic environments. A synthesis of the results allows to enhance the understanding of the interactions between behaviour and exposure of pedestrians and to identify conditions of increased risk exposure. These conditions include principal urban arterials (where risk-taking behaviour is low but the related exposure is very high) and minor arterials (where risk-taking behaviour is more frequent, and the related exposure is still high). A "paradox" of increased risk-taking behaviour of pedestrians with low

  16. Evaluation of pedestrian safety at intersections: A theoretical framework based on pedestrian-vehicle interaction patterns.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ni, Ying; Wang, Menglong; Sun, Jian; Li, Keping

    2016-11-01

    Pedestrians are the most vulnerable road users, and pedestrian safety has become a major research focus in recent years. Regarding the quality and quantity issues with collision data, conflict analysis using surrogate safety measures has become a useful method to study pedestrian safety. However, given the inequality between pedestrians and vehicles in encounters and the multiple interactions between pedestrians and vehicles, it is insufficient to simply use the same indicator(s) or the same way to aggregate indicators for all conditions. In addition, behavioral factors cannot be neglected. To better use information extracted from trajectories for safety evaluation and pay more attention on effects of behavioral factors, this paper develops a more sophisticated framework for pedestrian conflict analysis that takes pedestrian-vehicle interactions into consideration. A concept of three interaction patterns has been proposed for the first time, namely "hard interaction," "no interaction," and "soft-interaction." Interactions have been categorized under one of these patterns by analyzing profiles of speed and conflict indicators during the whole interactive processes. In this paper, a support vector machine (SVM) approach has been adopted to classify severity levels for a dataset including 1144 events extracted from three intersections in Shanghai, China, followed by an analysis of variable importance. The results revealed that different conflict indicators have different contributions to indicating the severity level under various interaction patterns. Therefore, it is recommended either to use specific conflict indicators or to use weighted indicator aggregation for each interaction pattern when evaluating pedestrian safety. The implementation has been carried out at the fourth crosswalk, and the results indicate that the proposed method can achieve a higher accuracy and better robustness than conventional methods. Furthermore, the method is helpful for better

  17. Relationship between pedestrian headform tests and injury and fatality rates in vehicle-to-pedestrian crashes in the United States.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mueller, Becky; Farmer, Charles; Jermakian, Jessica; Zuby, David

    2013-11-01

    Pedestrian protection evaluations have been developed to encourage vehicle front-end designs that mitigate the consequences of vehicle-to-pedestrian crashes. The European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP) evaluates pedestrian head protection with impacts against vehicle hood, windshield, and A-pillars. The Global Technical Regulation No. 9 (GTR 9), being evaluated for U.S. regulation, limits head protection evaluations to impacts against vehicle hoods. The objective of this study was to compare results from pedestrian head impact testing to the real-world rates of fatal and incapacitating injuries in U.S. pedestrian crashes. Data from police reported pedestrian crashes in 14 states were used to calculate real-world fatal and in- capacitating injury rates for seven 2002-07 small cars. Rates were 2.17-4.04 per 100 pedestrians struck for fatal injuries and 10.45-15.35 for incapacitating injuries. Euro NCAP style pedestrian headform tests were conducted against windshield, A-pillar, and hoods of the study vehicles. When compared with pedestrian injury rates, the vehicles' Euro NCAP scores, ranging 5-10 points, showed strong negative correlations (-0.6) to injury rates, though none were statistically significant. Data from the headform impacts for each of the study vehicles were used to calculate that vehicle's predicted serious injury risk. The predicted risks from both the Euro NCAP and GTR 9 test zones showed high positive correlations with the pedestrian fatal and incapacitating injury rates, though few were statistically significant. Whether vehicle stiffness is evaluated on all components of vehicle front ends (Euro NCAP) or is limited to hoods (GTR 9), softer vehicle components correspond to a lower risk of fatality.

  18. Managing Pedestrian and Car Interactions

    Science.gov (United States)

    2017-05-26

    In urban areas and especially in inner cities, pedestrians crossing the road considerably influence the road traffic flow. For political (environmental) reasons, priority could be given to pedestrians. A larger number of crossings reduces the pedestr...

  19. Pedestrian Friendly Traffic Signal Control.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-01-01

    This project continues research aimed at real-time detection and use of pedestrian : traffic flow information to enhance adaptive traffic signal control in urban areas : where pedestrian traffic is substantial and must be given appropriate attention ...

  20. Psychological distance of pedestrian at the bus terminal area

    Science.gov (United States)

    Firdaus Mohamad Ali, Mohd; Salleh Abustan, Muhamad; Hidayah Abu Talib, Siti; Abustan, Ismail; Rahman, Noorhazlinda Abd; Gotoh, Hitoshi

    2018-03-01

    Walking is a part of transportation modes that is effective for pedestrian in either short or long trips. All people are classified as pedestrian because people do walk every day and the higher number of people walking will lead to crowd conditions and that is the reason of the importance to study about the behaviour of pedestrian specifically the psychological distance in both indoor and outdoor. Nowadays, the number of studies of crowd dynamics among pedestrian have increased due to the concern about the safety issues primarily related to the emergency cases such as fire, earthquake, festival and etc. An observation of pedestrian was conducted at one of the main bus terminals in Kuala Lumpur with the main objective to obtain pedestrian psychological distance and it took place for 45 minutes by using a camcorder that was set up by using a tripod on the upper floor from the area of observation at the main lobby and the trapped area was approximately 100 m2. The analysis was focused on obtaining the gap between pedestrian based on two different categories, which are; (a) Pedestrian with relationship, and (b) Pedestrian without relationship. In total, 1,766 data were obtained during the analysis in which 561 data were obtained for `Pedestrian with relationship' and 1,205 data were obtained for "Pedestrian without relationship". Based on the obtained results, "Pedestrian without relationship" had shown a slightly higher average value of psychological distance between them compare to "Pedestrian with relationship" with the results of 1.6360m and 1.5909m respectively. In gender case, "Pedestrian without relationship" had higher mean of psychological distance in all three categories as well. Therefore, it can be concluded that pedestrian without relationship tend to have longer distance when walking in crowds.

  1. Predicting the walking speed of pedestrians on stairs

    OpenAIRE

    Fujiyama, T.; Tyler, N.

    2010-01-01

    In this paper, we propose a framework in which the behaviour of a pedestrian is predicted based on the characteristics of both the pedestrian and the facility the pedestrian uses. As an example of its application, we develop a model to predict the walking speed of a pedestrian on stairs. We examine the physiology and biomechanics of walking on stairs, and then develop a model that predicts walking speed based on the weight and leg extensor power of the pedestrian, and the gradient of the stai...

  2. Pedestrian recognition using automotive radar sensors

    OpenAIRE

    A. Bartsch; F. Fitzek; R. H. Rasshofer

    2012-01-01

    The application of modern series production automotive radar sensors to pedestrian recognition is an important topic in research on future driver assistance systems. The aim of this paper is to understand the potential and limits of such sensors in pedestrian recognition. This knowledge could be used to develop next generation radar sensors with improved pedestrian recognition capabilities. A new raw radar data signal processing algorithm is proposed that allows deep insight...

  3. Wind power and bird kills

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Raynolds, M.

    1998-01-01

    The accidental killing of birds by wind generators, and design improvements in the towers that support the turbines that might cut down on the bird killings were discussed. The first problem for the industry began in the late 1980s when the California Energy Commission reported as many as 160 birds (the majority being raptors, including the protected golden eagle) killed in one year in the vicinity of wind power plants. The key factor identified was the design of the towers as birds of prey are attracted to lattice towers as a place to hunt from. Tubular towers do not provide a place for the birds to perch, therefore they reduce the potential for bird strikes. Bird strikes also have been reported in Spain and the siting of the towers have been considered as the principal cause of the bird strikes. In view of these incidents, the wind power industry is developing standards for studying the potential of bird strikes and is continuing to study bird behaviour leading to collisions, the impact of topography, cumulative impacts and new techniques to reduce bird strikes. Despite the reported incidents, the risk of bird strikes by wind turbines, compared to other threats to birds such as pollution, oil spills, and other threats from fossil and nuclear fuels, is considered to be negligible. With continuing efforts to minimize incidents by proper design and siting, wind power can continue to grow as an environmentally sound and efficient source of energy

  4. Wind power and bird kills

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Raynolds, M.

    1998-12-01

    The accidental killing of birds by wind generators, and design improvements in the towers that support the turbines that might cut down on the bird killings were discussed. The first problem for the industry began in the late 1980s when the California Energy Commission reported as many as 160 birds (the majority being raptors, including the protected golden eagle) killed in one year in the vicinity of wind power plants. The key factor identified was the design of the towers as birds of prey are attracted to lattice towers as a place to hunt from. Tubular towers do not provide a place for the birds to perch, therefore they reduce the potential for bird strikes. Bird strikes also have been reported in Spain and the siting of the towers have been considered as the principal cause of the bird strikes. In view of these incidents, the wind power industry is developing standards for studying the potential of bird strikes and is continuing to study bird behaviour leading to collisions, the impact of topography, cumulative impacts and new techniques to reduce bird strikes. Despite the reported incidents, the risk of bird strikes by wind turbines, compared to other threats to birds such as pollution, oil spills, and other threats from fossil and nuclear fuels, is considered to be negligible. With continuing efforts to minimize incidents by proper design and siting, wind power can continue to grow as an environmentally sound and efficient source of energy.

  5. Jamming transitions induced by an attraction in pedestrian flow

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kwak, Jaeyoung; Jo, Hang-Hyun; Luttinen, Tapio; Kosonen, Iisakki

    2017-08-01

    We numerically study jamming transitions in pedestrian flow interacting with an attraction, mostly based on the social force model for pedestrians who can join the attraction. We formulate the joining probability as a function of social influence from others, reflecting that individual choice behavior is likely influenced by others. By controlling pedestrian influx and the social influence parameter, we identify various pedestrian flow patterns. For the bidirectional flow scenario, we observe a transition from the free flow phase to the freezing phase, in which oppositely walking pedestrians reach a complete stop and block each other. On the other hand, a different transition behavior appears in the unidirectional flow scenario, i.e., from the free flow phase to the localized jam phase and then to the extended jam phase. It is also observed that the extended jam phase can end up in freezing phenomena with a certain probability when pedestrian flux is high with strong social influence. This study highlights that attractive interactions between pedestrians and an attraction can trigger jamming transitions by increasing the number of conflicts among pedestrians near the attraction. In order to avoid excessive pedestrian jams, we suggest suppressing the number of conflicts under a certain level by moderating pedestrian influx especially when the social influence is strong.

  6. Jamming transitions induced by an attraction in pedestrian flow.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kwak, Jaeyoung; Jo, Hang-Hyun; Luttinen, Tapio; Kosonen, Iisakki

    2017-08-01

    We numerically study jamming transitions in pedestrian flow interacting with an attraction, mostly based on the social force model for pedestrians who can join the attraction. We formulate the joining probability as a function of social influence from others, reflecting that individual choice behavior is likely influenced by others. By controlling pedestrian influx and the social influence parameter, we identify various pedestrian flow patterns. For the bidirectional flow scenario, we observe a transition from the free flow phase to the freezing phase, in which oppositely walking pedestrians reach a complete stop and block each other. On the other hand, a different transition behavior appears in the unidirectional flow scenario, i.e., from the free flow phase to the localized jam phase and then to the extended jam phase. It is also observed that the extended jam phase can end up in freezing phenomena with a certain probability when pedestrian flux is high with strong social influence. This study highlights that attractive interactions between pedestrians and an attraction can trigger jamming transitions by increasing the number of conflicts among pedestrians near the attraction. In order to avoid excessive pedestrian jams, we suggest suppressing the number of conflicts under a certain level by moderating pedestrian influx especially when the social influence is strong.

  7. Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics 2012

    CERN Document Server

    Kirsch, Uwe; Schreckenberg, Michael

    2014-01-01

    The 6th International Conference on Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics conference (PED2012) showcased research on human locomotion. This book presents the proceedings of PED2012. Humans have walked for eons; our drive to settle the globe began with a walk out of Africa. However, much remains to discover. As the world moves toward sustainability while racing to assess and accommodate climate change, research must provide insight on the physical requirements of walking, the dynamics of pedestrians on the move and more. We must understand, predict and simulate pedestrian behaviour, to avoid dangerous situations, to plan for emergencies, and not least, to make walking more attractive and enjoyable. PED2012 offered 70 presentations and keynotes and 70 poster presentations covering new and improved mathematical models, describing new insights on pedestrian behaviour in normal and emergency cases and presenting research based on sensors and advanced observation methods. These papers offer a starting point for innova...

  8. Crossing Behaviour of Pedestrians Along Urban Streets in Malaysia

    OpenAIRE

    Al Bargi Walid A.; David Daniel Basil; Prasetijo Joewono; Rohani Munzilah Md; Mohamad Nor Siti Naquiyah

    2017-01-01

    Road crossings are considered as an unavoidable part of walking in which the desirable route of pedestrians interacts with vehicles. These interactions may expose the pedestrians to risks or delays. In Malaysia, road accident statistics show that pedestrian casualties are fairly high. Inappropriate gap acceptance when pedestrians cross roads is a main contributing element to this situation. In this context, the purpose of this study was to develop realistic models for pedestrian road crossing...

  9. Pedestrian hybrid beacon guide : recommendations and case study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2014-01-01

    A pedestrian hybrid beacon (PHB) is a traffic control : device similar to a European pedestrian signal : (PELICAN) that was imported to the US and adapted by : engineers in Arizona to increase motorists awareness of : pedestrian crossings at uncon...

  10. Pedestrian safety management using the risk-based approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Romanowska Aleksandra

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper presents a concept of a multi-level pedestrian safety management system. Three management levels are distinguished: strategic, tactical and operational. The basis for the proposed approach to pedestrian safety management is a risk-based method. In the approach the elements of behavioural and systemic theories were used, allowing for the development of a formalised and repeatable procedure integrating the phases of risk assessment and response to the hazards of road crashes involving pedestrians. Key to the method are tools supporting pedestrian safety management. According to the risk management approach, the tools can be divided into two groups: tools supporting risk assessment and tools supporting risk response. In the paper attention is paid to selected tools supporting risk assessment, with particular emphasis on the methods for estimating forecasted pedestrian safety measures (at strategic, national and regional level and identification of particularly dangerous locations in terms of pedestrian safety at tactical (regional and local and operational level. The proposed pedestrian safety management methods and tools can support road administration in making rational decisions in terms of road safety, safety of road infrastructure, crash elimination measures or reducing the consequences suffered by road users (particularly pedestrians as a result of road crashes.

  11. Mapping patterns of pedestrian fatal accidents in Israel

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Prato, Carlo Giacomo; Gitelman, Victoria; Bekhor, Shlomo

    2010-01-01

    This study intends to provide insight into pedestrian accidents by uncovering their patterns in order to design preventive measures and to allocate resources for identifiable problems. Kohonen neural networks are applied to a database of pedestrian fatal accidents occurred during the four-year pe......, results suggest the necessity of designing education campaigns for parents, promoting information campaigns for road users and allocating resources for infrastructural interventions and law enforcement in order to address the identified major problems.......-year period between 2003 and 2006. Results show the existence of five pedestrian accident patterns: (i) elderly pedestrians crossing on crosswalks far from intersection in metropolitan areas; (ii) pedestrians crossing suddenly or from hidden places and colliding with two-wheel vehicles on urban road sections......; (iii) male pedestrians crossing at night and being hit by four-wheel vehicles on rural road sections; (iv) young male pedestrians crossing at night wide road sections in both urban and rural areas; (v) children and teenagers crossing road sections in small rural communities. From the policy perspective...

  12. Dual effects of pedestrian density on emergency evacuation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ma, Yi; Lee, Eric Wai Ming; Yuen, Richard Kwok Kit

    2017-02-01

    This paper investigates the effect of the pedestrian density in building on the evacuation dynamic with simulation method. In the simulations, both the visibility in building and the exit limit of building are taken into account. The simulation results show that the effect of the pedestrian density in building on the evacuation dynamics is dual. On the one hand, when the visibility in building is very large, the increased pedestrian density plays a negative effect. On the other hand, when the visibility in building is very small, the increased pedestrian density can play a positive effect. The simulation results also show that when both the exit width and visibility are very small, the varying of evacuation time with regard to the pedestrian density is non-monotonous and presents a U-shaped tendency. That is, in this case, too large or too small pedestrian density in building is disadvantageous to the evacuation process. Our findings provide a new insight about the effect of the pedestrian density in building on the evacuation dynamic.

  13. Effects of Pedestrian Prompts on Motorist Yielding at Crosswalks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Crowley-Koch, Brian J.; Van Houten, Ron; Lim, Eunyoung

    2011-01-01

    Pedestrian safety is a serious concern at busy intersections and pedestrian campuses across the nation. Although crosswalks and signs inform pedestrians where to cross, there is no standard protocol for pedestrians to signal drivers that they wish to use the crosswalks, except to stand in or at the crosswalk. We examined the effects of two…

  14. An Algorithm for Pedestrian Detection in Multispectral Image Sequences

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kniaz, V. V.; Fedorenko, V. V.

    2017-05-01

    The growing interest for self-driving cars provides a demand for scene understanding and obstacle detection algorithms. One of the most challenging problems in this field is the problem of pedestrian detection. Main difficulties arise from a diverse appearances of pedestrians. Poor visibility conditions such as fog and low light conditions also significantly decrease the quality of pedestrian detection. This paper presents a new optical flow based algorithm BipedDetet that provides robust pedestrian detection on a single-borad computer. The algorithm is based on the idea of simplified Kalman filtering suitable for realization on modern single-board computers. To detect a pedestrian a synthetic optical flow of the scene without pedestrians is generated using slanted-plane model. The estimate of a real optical flow is generated using a multispectral image sequence. The difference of the synthetic optical flow and the real optical flow provides the optical flow induced by pedestrians. The final detection of pedestrians is done by the segmentation of the difference of optical flows. To evaluate the BipedDetect algorithm a multispectral dataset was collected using a mobile robot.

  15. Pedestrian fatalities and injuries involving Irish older people.

    LENUS (Irish Health Repository)

    Martin, A J

    2012-02-01

    BACKGROUND: It has been established internationally that road traffic accidents (RTAs) involving older drivers follow clearly different patterns of timing, location and outcomes from those of younger age groups. Older pedestrians are also a vulnerable group and fewer analyses have been undertaken of the phenomenology of their injuries and fatalities. We studied the pattern of pedestrian RTAs in Ireland over a five-year period with the aim of identifying differences between older pedestrians (aged 65 or older) and younger adults. METHODS: We examined the datasets of the Irish National Road Authority (now the Road Safety Authority) from 1998-2002. We analysed patterns of crashes involving older pedestrians (aged 65) and compared them with younger adults (aged 18-64). RESULTS: Older people represented 36% (n = 134) of pedestrian fatalities and 23% of serious injuries while they only account for 19% of total RTAs. Mortality in RTA is more than doubled for older pedestrians compared to younger adults (RR 2.30). Most accidents involving older pedestrians happen in daylight with good visibility (56%) and in good weather conditions (77%). CONCLUSIONS: Older pedestrians are particularly vulnerable in RTAs. These occur more frequently during daylight hours and in good weather conditions. This may point to a need for prevention strategies that are targeted at the traffic environment and other road users rather than at older people.

  16. Pedestrian-driver communication and decision strategies at marked crossings.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sucha, Matus; Dostal, Daniel; Risser, Ralf

    2017-05-01

    The aim of this work is to describe pedestrian-driver encounters, communication, and decision strategies at marked but unsignalised crossings in urban areas in the Czech Republic and the ways in which the parties involved experience and handle these encounters. A mixed-methods design was used, consisting of focus groups with pedestrians and drivers regarding their subjective views of the situations, on-site observations, camera recordings, speed measurements, the measurement of car and pedestrian densities, and brief on-site interviews with pedestrians. In close correspondence with the literature, our study revealed that the most relevant predictors of pedestrians' and drivers' behaviour at crossings were the densities of car traffic and pedestrian flows and car speed. The factors which influenced pedestrians' wait/go behaviour were: car speed, the distance of the car from the crossing, traffic density, whether there were cars approaching from both directions, various signs given by the driver (eye contact, waving a hand, flashing their lights), and the presence of other pedestrians. The factors influencing drivers' yield/go behaviour were: speed, traffic density, the number of pedestrians waiting to cross, and pedestrians being distracted. A great proportion of drivers (36%) failed to yield to pedestrians at marked crossings. The probability of conflict situations increased with cars travelling at a higher speed, higher traffic density, and pedestrians being distracted by a different activity while crossing. The findings of this study can add to the existing literature by helping to provide an understanding of the perception of encounter situations by the parties involved and the motives lying behind certain aspects of behaviour associated with these encounters. This seems necessary in order to develop suggestions for improvements. For instance, the infrastructure near pedestrian crossings should be designed in such a way as to take proper account of pedestrians

  17. Killing tensors and conformal Killing tensors from conformal Killing vectors

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Rani, Raffaele; Edgar, S Brian; Barnes, Alan

    2003-01-01

    Koutras has proposed some methods to construct reducible proper conformal Killing tensors and Killing tensors (which are, in general, irreducible) when a pair of orthogonal conformal Killing vectors exist in a given space. We give the completely general result demonstrating that this severe restriction of orthogonality is unnecessary. In addition, we correct and extend some results concerning Killing tensors constructed from a single conformal Killing vector. A number of examples demonstrate that it is possible to construct a much larger class of reducible proper conformal Killing tensors and Killing tensors than permitted by the Koutras algorithms. In particular, by showing that all conformal Killing tensors are reducible in conformally flat spaces, we have a method of constructing all conformal Killing tensors, and hence all the Killing tensors (which will in general be irreducible) of conformally flat spaces using their conformal Killing vectors

  18. Fuzzy Pheromone Potential Fields for Virtual Pedestrian Simulation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Meriem Mandar

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The study of collective movement of pedestrians is crucial in various situations, such as evacuation of buildings, stadiums, or external events like concerts or public events. In such situations and under panic conditions, several incidents and disasters may arise, resulting in loss of human lives. Hence, the study and modeling of the pedestrians behavior are imperative in both normal and panic situations. In a previous work, we developed a microscopic model for pedestrian movement based on the algorithm of Ant Colonies and the principles of cellular automata. We took advantage of a fuzzy model to better reflect the uncertainty and vagueness of the perception of space to pedestrians, especially to represent the desirability or blurred visibility of virtual pedestrians. This paper uses the mechanism of artificial potential fields. Said fields provide virtual pedestrians with better visibility of their surroundings and its various components (goals and obstacles. The predictions provided by the first-order traffic flow theory are confirmed by the results of the simulation. The advantage of this model lies in the combination of benefits provided by the model of ants and artificial potential fields in a fuzzy modeling, to better understand the perceptions of pedestrians.

  19. Safer passenger car front shapes for pedestrians: A computational approach to reduce overall pedestrian injury risk in realistic impact scenarios.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Guibing; Yang, Jikuang; Simms, Ciaran

    2017-03-01

    Vehicle front shape has a significant influence on pedestrian injuries and the optimal design for overall pedestrian protection remains an elusive goal, especially considering the variability of vehicle-to-pedestrian accident scenarios. Therefore this study aims to develop and evaluate an efficient framework for vehicle front shape optimization for pedestrian protection accounting for the broad range of real world impact scenarios and their distributions in recent accident data. Firstly, a framework for vehicle front shape optimization for pedestrian protection was developed based on coupling of multi-body simulations and a genetic algorithm. This framework was then applied for optimizing passenger car front shape for pedestrian protection, and its predictions were evaluated using accident data and kinematic analyses. The results indicate that the optimization shows a good convergence and predictions of the optimization framework are corroborated when compared to the available accident data, and the optimization framework can distinguish 'good' and 'poor' vehicle front shapes for pedestrian safety. Thus, it is feasible and reliable to use the optimization framework for vehicle front shape optimization for reducing overall pedestrian injury risk. The results also show the importance of considering the broad range of impact scenarios in vehicle front shape optimization. A safe passenger car for overall pedestrian protection should have a wide and flat bumper (covering pedestrians' legs from the lower leg up to the shaft of the upper leg with generally even contacts), a bonnet leading edge height around 750mm, a short bonnet (17° or car front shape for head and leg protection are generally consistent, but partially conflict with pelvis protection. In particular, both head and leg injury risk increase with increasing bumper lower height and depth, and decrease with increasing bonnet leading edge height, while pelvis injury risk increases with increasing bonnet leading

  20. Pedestrian detection based on redundant wavelet transform

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Lin; Ji, Liping; Hu, Ping; Yang, Tiejun

    2016-10-01

    Intelligent video surveillance is to analysis video or image sequences captured by a fixed or mobile surveillance camera, including moving object detection, segmentation and recognition. By using it, we can be notified immediately in an abnormal situation. Pedestrian detection plays an important role in an intelligent video surveillance system, and it is also a key technology in the field of intelligent vehicle. So pedestrian detection has very vital significance in traffic management optimization, security early warn and abnormal behavior detection. Generally, pedestrian detection can be summarized as: first to estimate moving areas; then to extract features of region of interest; finally to classify using a classifier. Redundant wavelet transform (RWT) overcomes the deficiency of shift variant of discrete wavelet transform, and it has better performance in motion estimation when compared to discrete wavelet transform. Addressing the problem of the detection of multi-pedestrian with different speed, we present an algorithm of pedestrian detection based on motion estimation using RWT, combining histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) and support vector machine (SVM). Firstly, three intensities of movement (IoM) are estimated using RWT and the corresponding areas are segmented. According to the different IoM, a region proposal (RP) is generated. Then, the features of a RP is extracted using HOG. Finally, the features are fed into a SVM trained by pedestrian databases and the final detection results are gained. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm can detect pedestrians accurately and efficiently.

  1. Pedestrian Crashes

    Data.gov (United States)

    Town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina — This data set maps the locations of crashes involving pedestrians in the Chapel Hill Region of North Carolina.The data comes from police-reported bicycle-motor...

  2. Evaluation of geometrically personalized THUMS pedestrian model response against sedan-pedestrian PMHS impact test data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Huipeng; Poulard, David; Forman, Jason; Crandall, Jeff; Panzer, Matthew B

    2018-07-04

    Evaluating the biofidelity of pedestrian finite element models (PFEM) using postmortem human subjects (PMHS) is a challenge because differences in anthropometry between PMHS and PFEM could limit a model's capability to accurately capture cadaveric responses. Geometrical personalization via morphing can modify the PFEM geometry to match the specific PMHS anthropometry, which could alleviate this issue. In this study, the Total Human Model for Safety (THUMS) PFEM (Ver 4.01) was compared to the cadaveric response in vehicle-pedestrian impacts using geometrically personalized models. The AM50 THUMS PFEM was used as the baseline model, and 2 morphed PFEM were created to the anthropometric specifications of 2 obese PMHS used in a previous pedestrian impact study with a mid-size sedan. The same measurements as those obtained during the PMHS tests were calculated from the simulations (kinematics, accelerations, strains), and biofidelity metrics based on signals correlation (correlation and analysis, CORA) were established to compare the response of the models to the experiments. Injury outcomes were predicted deterministically (through strain-based threshold) and probabilistically (with injury risk functions) and compared with the injuries reported in the necropsy. The baseline model could not accurately capture all aspects of the PMHS kinematics, strain, and injury risks, whereas the morphed models reproduced biofidelic response in terms of trajectory (CORA score = 0.927 ± 0.092), velocities (0.975 ± 0.027), accelerations (0.862 ± 0.072), and strains (0.707 ± 0.143). The personalized THUMS models also generally predicted injuries consistent with those identified during posttest autopsy. The study highlights the need to control for pedestrian anthropometry when validating pedestrian human body models against PMHS data. The information provided in the current study could be useful for improving model biofidelity for vehicle-pedestrian impact scenarios.

  3. Modelling Behaviour Patterns of Pedestrians for Mobile Robot Trajectory Generation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yusuke Tamura

    2013-08-01

    Full Text Available Robots are expected to be operated in environments where they coexist with humans, such as shopping malls and offices. Both the safety and efficiency of a robot are necessary in such environments. To achieve this, pedestrian behaviour should be accurately predicted. However, the behaviour is uncertain and cannot be easily predicted. This paper proposes a probabilistic method of determining pedestrian trajectory based on an estimation of pedestrian behaviour patterns. The proposed method focuses on the specific behaviour of pedestrians around the robot. The proposed model classifies the behaviours of pedestrians into definite patterns. The behaviour patterns, distribution of the positions of the pedestrians, and the direction of each behaviour pattern are determined by learning through observation. The behaviour pattern of a pedestrian can be estimated correctly by a likelihood calculation. A robot decides to move with an emphasis on either safety or efficiency depending on the result of the pattern estimation. If the pedestrian trajectory follows a known behaviour pattern, the robot would move with an emphasis on efficiency because the pedestrian trajectory can be predicted. Otherwise, the robot would move with an emphasis on safety because the behaviour of the pedestrian cannot be predicted. Experimental results show that robots can move efficiently and safely when passing by a pedestrian by applying the proposed method.

  4. Pedestrian wind environment around tall buildings

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Stathopoulos, T.; Blocken, B.; Tamura, Yukio; Yoshie, Ryuichiro

    2016-01-01

    Pedestrian-level wind conditions around tall buildings are described by examining the aerodynamics of the urban environment and the various wind comfort criteria established in the wind engineering field. Experimental and, possibly, computational assessment of pedestrian-level wind conditions in the

  5. The correlation between pedestrian injury severity in real-life crashes and Euro NCAP pedestrian test results.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Strandroth, Johan; Rizzi, Matteo; Sternlund, Simon; Lie, Anders; Tingvall, Claes

    2011-12-01

    The aim of the present study was to estimate the correlation between Euro NCAP pedestrian rating scores and injury outcome in real-life car-to-pedestrian crashes, with special focus on long-term disability. Another aim was to determine whether brake assist (BA) systems affect the injury outcome in real-life car-to-pedestrian crashes and to estimate the combined effects in injury reduction of a high Euro NCAP ranking score and BA. In the current study, the Euro NCAP pedestrian scoring was compared with the real-life outcome in pedestrian crashes that occurred in Sweden during 2003 to 2010. The real-life crash data were obtained from the data acquisition system Swedish Traffic Accident Data Acquisition (STRADA), which combines police records and hospital admission data. The medical data consisted of International Classification of Diseases (ICD) diagnoses and Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) scoring. In all, approximately 500 pedestrians submitted to hospital were included in the study. Each car model was coded according to Euro NCAP pedestrian scores. In addition, the presence or absence of BA was coded for each car involved. Cars were grouped according to their scoring. Injury outcomes were analyzed with AIS and, at the victim level, with permanent medical impairment. This was done by translating the injury scores for each individual to the risk of serious consequences (RSC) at 1, 5, and 10 percent risk of disability level. This indicates the total risk of a medical disability for each victim, given the severity and location of injuries. The mean RSC (mRSC) was then calculated for each car group and t-tests were conducted to falsify the null hypothesis at p ≤ .05 that the mRSC within the groups was equal. The results showed a significant reduction of injury severity for cars with better pedestrian scoring, although cars with a high score could not be studied due to lack of cases. The reduction in RSC for medium-performing cars in comparison with low-performing cars

  6. Analysis of Pedestrian Gap Acceptance and Crossing Decision in Kuala Lumpur

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mohamad Nor Siti Naquiyah

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Pedestrians are most vulnerable of all road users. This research aims to investigate and model pedestrian road crossing behaviour at crossing facilities. In particular, they have two aspects of pedestrians crossing behaviour are examined, namely the size of traffic gaps acceptance by pedestrians and the decision of pedestrians either to cross the road or not. A fields survey was carried out at six crossing facilities which from a zebra crossing at midblock. In this survey, the data were recorded in real traffic condition using video recorder. Determine the associations between characteristics of pedestrians, crossing facilities and vehicular traffic through on-site observations of pedestrian behaviour. This data will analysis using statistical analysis which is multiple regression and binary logit regression method. It is hope that through this research, the model of pedestrian gap acceptance and pedestrian crossing decision can be reached and what are the indicators that pedestrians look for when accepting gaps to cross the road.

  7. Crossing Behaviour of Pedestrians Along Urban Streets in Malaysia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Al Bargi Walid A.

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Road crossings are considered as an unavoidable part of walking in which the desirable route of pedestrians interacts with vehicles. These interactions may expose the pedestrians to risks or delays. In Malaysia, road accident statistics show that pedestrian casualties are fairly high. Inappropriate gap acceptance when pedestrians cross roads is a main contributing element to this situation. In this context, the purpose of this study was to develop realistic models for pedestrian road crossing behaviour using the regression technique for mid-block street crossing. A choice model was produced to capture the decision making process of pedestrians whereas rejected or accepted vehicular gaps was based on the discrete choice theory. Gap acceptance data under real mix traffic conditions was collected using video camera on a typical unsignalised two lane one way urban street section in the city center of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The lognormal regression model developed for the crossing behaviour model shows that traffic speed, pedestrian waiting time, gender, crossing distance, age group, frequency of attempts and pedestrian number are the significant factors which are able to predict 77.0% of variance or changes in accepted gap size at 0.05 significance level. Higher traffic speed, lower waiting time, being a male, wider crossing distance, older age group, lower frequency of attempts and higher number of pedestrian were found to influence pedestrians to accept a bigger gap size. The binary logistic regression developed for the crossing choice model was found to be influenced by traffic speed, driver yield, pedestrian number and age group. Furthermore, lower traffic speed, willingness of drivers to slow down, more pedestrian crossings at the same time and a younger age group lead to a higher chance or probability of crossing roads. The model was validated again using 100 isolated samples and an accuracy of 98% was obtained compared to the calibrated

  8. Pedestrians have the right of way at CERN

    CERN Multimedia

    2002-01-01

    At CERN, we are all pedestrians, often drivers, and occasionally cyclists. But our means of locomotion do not matter so long as we exercise caution and remember that a pedestrian has equal rights as a road user, except that he runs greater risks.   Whether we also travel by bike or car, irrrespective of our means of locomotion at CERN we are all pedestrians! Whether going on foot to our office, the cafeteria or a building where colleagues work, we are much more in harm's way than as a driver sitting in the shell of steel that is a car. There are some 8000 people working on the different sites of CERN. That means 8000 potential pedestrians and 8000 reasons for trying to keep the roads safe. Whether behind the steering wheel or on a bike, we sometimes forget that the roadway is not just for vehicles. Pedestrians are also fully fledged road users with equal rights. That is why drivers must remain alert and take care not to block pedestrian crossings, pavements or access ways, and why special caution...

  9. Pedestrian Detection by Laser Scanning and Depth Imagery

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barsi, A.; Lovas, T.; Molnar, B.; Somogyi, A.; Igazvolgyi, Z.

    2016-06-01

    Pedestrian flow is much less regulated and controlled compared to vehicle traffic. Estimating flow parameters would support many safety, security or commercial applications. Current paper discusses a method that enables acquiring information on pedestrian movements without disturbing and changing their motion. Profile laser scanner and depth camera have been applied to capture the geometry of the moving people as time series. Procedures have been developed to derive complex flow parameters, such as count, volume, walking direction and velocity from laser scanned point clouds. Since no images are captured from the faces of pedestrians, no privacy issues raised. The paper includes accuracy analysis of the estimated parameters based on video footage as reference. Due to the dense point clouds, detailed geometry analysis has been conducted to obtain the height and shoulder width of pedestrians and to detect whether luggage has been carried or not. The derived parameters support safety (e.g. detecting critical pedestrian density in mass events), security (e.g. detecting prohibited baggage in endangered areas) and commercial applications (e.g. counting pedestrians at all entrances/exits of a shopping mall).

  10. New insights into turbulent pedestrian movement pattern in crowd-quakes

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ma, J; Song, W G; Lo, S M; Fang, Z M

    2013-01-01

    Video recordings right before the Love Parade disaster have been quantitatively analyzed to explore the bursts of unusual crowd movement patterns, crowd-quakes. The pedestrian movement pattern in this incident was special for the reason that it happened in a congested counter flow scenario, where stopped pedestrians were involved. No one was believed to have pushed others intentionally at the beginning, however, under this situation, the body contacts among the pedestrians still induced a force spread, which then led to velocity fluctuation. As indicated by the individual velocity-related features, the densely crowded pedestrian movement displayed turbulent flow features. Further analyzing the overall flow field, we also found that the pedestrian flow field shared typical patterns with turbulent fluid flow. As a result of the turbulent state, different clusters of pedestrians displayed different velocity features. Thus crowd pressure which took into account the velocity and density information was proved to be a good indicator of crowd disasters. Based on these essential features of pedestrian crowd-quakes, a minimal model, i.e., a pedestrian crowd-quake model, was established. Effects including pedestrian gait, stress conservation level and personal intention to escape were explored. (paper)

  11. Analyzing fault in pedestrian-motor vehicle crashes in North Carolina.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ulfarsson, Gudmundur F; Kim, Sungyop; Booth, Kathleen M

    2010-11-01

    Crashes between pedestrians and motor vehicles are an important traffic safety concern. This paper explores the assignment of fault in such crashes, where observed factors are associated with pedestrian at fault, driver at fault, or both at fault. The analysis is based on police reported crash data for 1997 through 2000 in North Carolina, U.S.A. The results show that pedestrians are found at fault in 59% of the crashes, drivers in 32%, and both are found at fault in 9%. The results indicate drivers need to take greater notice of pedestrians when drivers are turning, merging, and backing up as these are some of the prime factors associated with the driver being found at fault in a crash. Pedestrians must apply greater caution when crossing streets, waiting to cross, and when walking along roads, as these are correlated with pedestrians being found at fault. The results suggest a need for campaigns focused on positively affecting pedestrian street-crossing behavior in combination with added jaywalking enforcement. The results also indicate that campaigns to increase the use of pedestrian visibility improvements at night can have a significant positive impact on traffic safety. Intoxication is a concern and the results show that it is not only driver intoxication that is affecting safety, but also pedestrian intoxication. The findings show in combination with other research in the field, that results from traffic safety studies are not necessarily transferable between distant geographic locations, and that location-specific safety research needs to take place. It is also important to further study the specific effects of the design of the pedestrian environment on safety, e.g. crosswalk spacing, signal timings, etc., which together may affect pedestrian safety and pedestrian behavior. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  12. Vehicular camera pedestrian detection research

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Jiahui

    2018-03-01

    With the rapid development of science and technology, it has made great development, but at the same time of highway traffic more convenient in highway traffic and transportation. However, in the meantime, traffic safety accidents occur more and more frequently in China. In order to deal with the increasingly heavy traffic safety. So, protecting the safety of people's personal property and facilitating travel has become a top priority. The real-time accurate pedestrian and driving environment are obtained through a vehicular camera which are used to detection and track the preceding moving targets. It is popular in the domain of intelligent vehicle safety driving, autonomous navigation and traffic system research. Based on the pedestrian video obtained by the Vehicular Camera, this paper studies the trajectory of pedestrian detection and its algorithm.

  13. PEDESTRIAN DETECTION BY LASER SCANNING AND DEPTH IMAGERY

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    A. Barsi

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Pedestrian flow is much less regulated and controlled compared to vehicle traffic. Estimating flow parameters would support many safety, security or commercial applications. Current paper discusses a method that enables acquiring information on pedestrian movements without disturbing and changing their motion. Profile laser scanner and depth camera have been applied to capture the geometry of the moving people as time series. Procedures have been developed to derive complex flow parameters, such as count, volume, walking direction and velocity from laser scanned point clouds. Since no images are captured from the faces of pedestrians, no privacy issues raised. The paper includes accuracy analysis of the estimated parameters based on video footage as reference. Due to the dense point clouds, detailed geometry analysis has been conducted to obtain the height and shoulder width of pedestrians and to detect whether luggage has been carried or not. The derived parameters support safety (e.g. detecting critical pedestrian density in mass events, security (e.g. detecting prohibited baggage in endangered areas and commercial applications (e.g. counting pedestrians at all entrances/exits of a shopping mall.

  14. Modeling Spatially Unrestricted Pedestrian Traffic on Footbridges

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Zivanovic, Stana; Pavic, Aleksandar; Ingólfsson, Einar Thór

    2010-01-01

    restricted movement of pedestrians, has kept attracting attention of researchers. However, it is the normal spatially unrestricted pedestrian traffic, and its vertical dynamic loading component, that are most relevant for vibration serviceability checks for most footbridges. Despite the existence of numerous...... design procedures concerned with this loading, the current confidence in its modelling is low due to lack of verification of the models on as-built structures. This is the motivation behind reviewing the existing design procedures for modelling normal pedestrian traffic in this paper and evaluating...

  15. A study of pedestrian compliance with traffic signals for exclusive and concurrent phasing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ivan, John N; McKernan, Kevin; Zhang, Yaohua; Ravishanker, Nalini; Mamun, Sha A

    2017-01-01

    This paper describes a comparison of pedestrian compliance at traffic signals with two types of pedestrian phasing: concurrent, where both pedestrians and vehicular traffic are directed to move in the same directions at the same time, and exclusive, where pedestrians are directed to move during their own dedicated phase while all vehicular traffic is stopped. Exclusive phasing is usually perceived to be safer, especially by senior and disabled advocacy groups, although these safety benefits depend upon pedestrians waiting for the walk signal. This paper investigates whether or not there are differences between pedestrian compliance at signals with exclusive pedestrian phasing and those with concurrent phasing and whether these differences continue to exist when compliance at exclusive phasing signals is evaluated as if they had concurrent phasing. Pedestrian behavior was observed at 42 signalized intersections in central Connecticut with both concurrent and exclusive pedestrian phasing. Binary regression models were estimated to predict pedestrian compliance as a function of the pedestrian phasing type and other intersection characteristics, such as vehicular and pedestrian volume, crossing distance and speed limit. We found that pedestrian compliance is significantly higher at intersections with concurrent pedestrian phasing than at those with exclusive pedestrian phasing, but this difference is not significant when compliance at exclusive phase intersections is evaluated as if it had concurrent phasing. This suggests that pedestrians treat exclusive phase intersections as though they have concurrent phasing, rendering the safety benefits of exclusive pedestrian phasing elusive. No differences were observed for senior or non-senior pedestrians. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  16. Calibrating cellular automaton models for pedestrians walking through corners

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dias, Charitha; Lovreglio, Ruggiero

    2018-05-01

    Cellular Automata (CA) based pedestrian simulation models have gained remarkable popularity as they are simpler and easier to implement compared to other microscopic modeling approaches. However, incorporating traditional floor field representations in CA models to simulate pedestrian corner navigation behavior could result in unrealistic behaviors. Even though several previous studies have attempted to enhance CA models to realistically simulate pedestrian maneuvers around bends, such modifications have not been calibrated or validated against empirical data. In this study, two static floor field (SFF) representations, namely 'discrete representation' and 'continuous representation', are calibrated for CA-models to represent pedestrians' walking behavior around 90° bends. Trajectory data collected through a controlled experiment are used to calibrate these model representations. Calibration results indicate that although both floor field representations can represent pedestrians' corner navigation behavior, the 'continuous' representation fits the data better. Output of this study could be beneficial for enhancing the reliability of existing CA-based models by representing pedestrians' corner navigation behaviors more realistically.

  17. Neighborhood Influences on Vehicle-Pedestrian Crash Severity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Toran Pour, Alireza; Moridpour, Sara; Tay, Richard; Rajabifard, Abbas

    2017-12-01

    Socioeconomic factors are known to be contributing factors for vehicle-pedestrian crashes. Although several studies have examined the socioeconomic factors related to the location of the crashes, limited studies have considered the socioeconomic factors of the neighborhood where the road users live in vehicle-pedestrian crash modelling. This research aims to identify the socioeconomic factors related to both the neighborhoods where the road users live and where crashes occur that have an influence on vehicle-pedestrian crash severity. Data on vehicle-pedestrian crashes that occurred at mid-blocks in Melbourne, Australia, was analyzed. Neighborhood factors associated with road users' residents and location of crash were investigated using boosted regression tree (BRT). Furthermore, partial dependence plots were applied to illustrate the interactions between these factors. We found that socioeconomic factors accounted for 60% of the 20 top contributing factors to vehicle-pedestrian crashes. This research reveals that socioeconomic factors of the neighborhoods where the road users live and where the crashes occur are important in determining the severity of the crashes, with the former having a greater influence. Hence, road safety countermeasures, especially those focussing on the road users, should be targeted at these high-risk neighborhoods.

  18. Safety effects of exclusive and concurrent signal phasing for pedestrian crossing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Yaohua; Mamun, Sha A; Ivan, John N; Ravishanker, Nalini; Haque, Khademul

    2015-10-01

    This paper describes the estimation of pedestrian crash count and vehicle interaction severity prediction models for a sample of signalized intersections in Connecticut with either concurrent or exclusive pedestrian phasing. With concurrent phasing, pedestrians cross at the same time as motor vehicle traffic in the same direction receives a green phase, while with exclusive phasing, pedestrians cross during their own phase when all motor vehicle traffic on all approaches is stopped. Pedestrians crossing at each intersection were observed and classified according to the severity of interactions with motor vehicles. Observation intersections were selected to represent both types of signal phasing while controlling for other physical characteristics. In the nonlinear mixed models for interaction severity, pedestrians crossing on the walk signal at an exclusive signal experienced lower interaction severity compared to those crossing on the green light with concurrent phasing; however, pedestrians crossing on a green light where an exclusive phase was available experienced higher interaction severity. Intersections with concurrent phasing have fewer total pedestrian crashes than those with exclusive phasing but more crashes at higher severity levels. It is recommended that exclusive pedestrian phasing only be used at locations where pedestrians are more likely to comply. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  19. Research on the Effects of Heterogeneity on Pedestrian Dynamics in Walkway of Subway Station

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Haoling Wu

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The major objective of this paper is to study the effects of heterogeneity on pedestrian dynamics in walkway of subway station. We analyze the observed data of the selected facility and find that walking speed and occupied space were varied in the population. In reality, pedestrians are heterogeneous individuals with different attributes. However, the research on how the heterogeneity affects the pedestrian dynamics in facilities of subway stations is insufficient. The improved floor field model is therefore presented to explore the effects of heterogeneity. Pedestrians are classified into pedestrians walking in pairs, fast pedestrians, and ordinary pedestrians. For convenience, they are denoted as P-pedestrians, F-pedestrians, and O-pedestrians, respectively. The proposed model is validated under homogeneous and heterogeneous conditions. Three pedestrian compositions are simulated to analyze the effects of heterogeneity on pedestrian dynamics. The results show that P-pedestrians have negative effect and F-pedestrians have positive effect. All of the results in this paper indicate that the capacity of walkway is not a constant value. It changes with different component proportions of heterogeneous pedestrians. The heterogeneity of pedestrian has an important influence on the pedestrian dynamics in the walkway of the subway station.

  20. Modeling pedestrian gap crossing index under mixed traffic condition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Naser, Mohamed M; Zulkiple, Adnan; Al Bargi, Walid A; Khalifa, Nasradeen A; Daniel, Basil David

    2017-12-01

    There are a variety of challenges faced by pedestrians when they walk along and attempt to cross a road, as the most recorded accidents occur during this time. Pedestrians of all types, including both sexes with numerous aging groups, are always subjected to risk and are characterized as the most exposed road users. The increased demand for better traffic management strategies to reduce the risks at intersections, improve quality traffic management, traffic volume, and longer cycle time has further increased concerns over the past decade. This paper aims to develop a sustainable pedestrian gap crossing index model based on traffic flow density. It focusses on the gaps accepted by pedestrians and their decision for street crossing, where (Log-Gap) logarithm of accepted gaps was used to optimize the result of a model for gap crossing behavior. Through a review of extant literature, 15 influential variables were extracted for further empirical analysis. Subsequently, data from the observation at an uncontrolled mid-block in Jalan Ampang in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia was gathered and Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) and Binary Logit Model (BLM) techniques were employed to analyze the results. From the results, different pedestrian behavioral characteristics were considered for a minimum gap size model, out of which only a few (four) variables could explain the pedestrian road crossing behavior while the remaining variables have an insignificant effect. Among the different variables, age, rolling gap, vehicle type, and crossing were the most influential variables. The study concludes that pedestrians' decision to cross the street depends on the pedestrian age, rolling gap, vehicle type, and size of traffic gap before crossing. The inferences from these models will be useful to increase pedestrian safety and performance evaluation of uncontrolled midblock road crossings in developing countries. Copyright © 2017 National Safety Council and Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. Robust Pedestrian Classification Based on Hierarchical Kernel Sparse Representation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rui Sun

    2016-08-01

    Full Text Available Vision-based pedestrian detection has become an active topic in computer vision and autonomous vehicles. It aims at detecting pedestrians appearing ahead of the vehicle using a camera so that autonomous vehicles can assess the danger and take action. Due to varied illumination and appearance, complex background and occlusion pedestrian detection in outdoor environments is a difficult problem. In this paper, we propose a novel hierarchical feature extraction and weighted kernel sparse representation model for pedestrian classification. Initially, hierarchical feature extraction based on a CENTRIST descriptor is used to capture discriminative structures. A max pooling operation is used to enhance the invariance of varying appearance. Then, a kernel sparse representation model is proposed to fully exploit the discrimination information embedded in the hierarchical local features, and a Gaussian weight function as the measure to effectively handle the occlusion in pedestrian images. Extensive experiments are conducted on benchmark databases, including INRIA, Daimler, an artificially generated dataset and a real occluded dataset, demonstrating the more robust performance of the proposed method compared to state-of-the-art pedestrian classification methods.

  2. Evaluation of pedestrian mid-block road crossing behaviour using artificial neural network

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    B. Raghuram Kadali

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available Pedestrians usually cross the road at mid-block locations in India because of the ease and convenience to reach their destination as compared to intersection locations. It is important to evaluate the pedestrian gap acceptance behavior at mid-block locations because of inadequate vehicular gaps under mixed traffic condition, which translates into the pedestrian road crossing behavior. The present study examines the pedestrian gap acceptance behaviour by employing an artificial neural network (ANN model for understanding the decision making process of pedestrians, i.e., acceptance or rejection of vehicular gaps at a mid-block location. From the results it has been found that the pedestrian rolling gap, frequency of attempt, vehicular gap size, pedestrian speed change condition and vehicle speed have major role in pedestrian gap acceptance. These results can lead to a better design of pedestrian crossing facilities where adequate gaps are not available in vehicular flow at mid-block crosswalk locations.

  3. The risk of pedestrian collisions with peripheral visual field loss

    OpenAIRE

    Peli, Eli; Apfelbaum, Henry; Berson, Eliot L.; Goldstein, Robert B.

    2016-01-01

    Patients with peripheral field loss complain of colliding with other pedestrians in open-space environments such as shopping malls. Field expansion devices (e.g., prisms) can create artificial peripheral islands of vision. We investigated the visual angle at which these islands can be most effective for avoiding pedestrian collisions, by modeling the collision risk density as a function of bearing angle of pedestrians relative to the patient. Pedestrians at all possible locations were assumed...

  4. Cars kill chimpanzees: case report of a wild chimpanzee killed on a road at Bulindi, Uganda.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McLennan, Matthew R; Asiimwe, Caroline

    2016-07-01

    Roads have broadly adverse impacts on wildlife, including nonhuman primates. One direct effect is mortality from collisions with vehicles. While highly undesirable, roadkills provide valuable information on the health and condition of endangered species. We present a case report of a wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) killed crossing a road in Bulindi, Uganda, where chimpanzees inhabit forest fragments amid farmland. Details of the collision are constructed from eyewitness accounts of pedestrians. Physical examination of the cadaver indicated good overall body condition; at 40 kg, the deceased female was heavier than usual for an adult female East African chimpanzee. No external wounds or fractures were noted. Coprological assessment demonstrated infection by several gastrointestinal parasites commonly reported in living wild chimpanzees. Histopathology revealed eosinophilic enteritis and biliary hyperplasia potentially caused by parasite infection. However, eosinophilia was not widely spread into the submucosa, while egg/cyst counts suggested low-intensity parasite infections compared to healthy female chimpanzees of similar age in nearby Budongo Forest. No behavioral indicators of ill health were noted in the deceased female in the month prior to the accident. We conclude that cause of death was acute, i.e., shock from the collision, and was probably unrelated to parasite infection or any other underlying health condition. Notably, this female had asymmetrical polythelia, and, while nursing at the time of her death, had one functioning mammary gland only. In Uganda, where primates often inhabit human-dominated landscapes, human population growth and economic development has given rise to increasing motor traffic, while road development is enabling motorists to travel at greater speeds. Thus, the danger of roads to apes and other wildlife is rising, necessitating urgent strategies to reduce risks. Installation of simple speed-bumps-common on Ugandan

  5. Update schemes of multi-velocity floor field cellular automaton for pedestrian dynamics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luo, Lin; Fu, Zhijian; Cheng, Han; Yang, Lizhong

    2018-02-01

    Modeling pedestrian movement is an interesting problem both in statistical physics and in computational physics. Update schemes of cellular automaton (CA) models for pedestrian dynamics govern the schedule of pedestrian movement. Usually, different update schemes make the models behave in different ways, which should be carefully recalibrated. Thus, in this paper, we investigated the influence of four different update schemes, namely parallel/synchronous scheme, random scheme, order-sequential scheme and shuffled scheme, on pedestrian dynamics. The multi-velocity floor field cellular automaton (FFCA) considering the changes of pedestrians' moving properties along walking paths and heterogeneity of pedestrians' walking abilities was used. As for parallel scheme only, the collisions detection and resolution should be considered, resulting in a great difference from any other update schemes. For pedestrian evacuation, the evacuation time is enlarged, and the difference in pedestrians' walking abilities is better reflected, under parallel scheme. In face of a bottleneck, for example a exit, using a parallel scheme leads to a longer congestion period and a more dispersive density distribution. The exit flow and the space-time distribution of density and velocity have significant discrepancies under four different update schemes when we simulate pedestrian flow with high desired velocity. Update schemes may have no influence on pedestrians in simulation to create tendency to follow others, but sequential and shuffled update scheme may enhance the effect of pedestrians' familiarity with environments.

  6. The Study on In-City Capacity Affected by Pedestrian Crossing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chang-jiang Zheng

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Currently, the urban road traffic congestion is serious and the traffic accident is happening at a high frequency; thus it has not satisfied the travel needs of security and affects the quality of urban trips. In order to effectively relieve the confliction of people and motor vehicle, to make sure of the safety of pedestrians crossing the road, and to improve the capacity of urban roads, this passage focuses on studying the influence of pedestrians crossing the roads on the capacity of urban roads in three pedestrian crossing approaches including freely crossing the street, uncontrolled crossing of the pedestrian crosswalk, and controlled crossing of the pedestrian crosswalk. Firstly, it confirms the general formula of the road capacity when pedestrians are crossing the road based on three preassumptions, combined with the survey data, and then constructs the empirical mathematical model of pedestrian crossing on the capacity impact. Lastly, it takes the step of case calculation and simulation evaluation and calculates errors between them, finding that the error between the model calculation and software simulation is small. The efficiency of the model is validated and improved.

  7. Pedestrian and bicycle crash data analysis : 2005-2010.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2012-04-03

    The safety of pedestrians and bicyclists using the roadway is an increasing concern for the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). This report summarizes data for motor vehicle crashes involving pedestrians and bicyclists in Michigan from 2005...

  8. Social evaluation of intentional, truly accidental, and negligently accidental helpers and harmers by 10-month-old infants.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Woo, Brandon M; Steckler, Conor M; Le, Doan T; Hamlin, J Kiley

    2017-11-01

    Whereas adults largely base their evaluations of others' actions on others' intentions, a host of research in developmental psychology suggests that younger children privilege outcome over intention, leading them to condemn accidental harm. To date, this question has been examined only with children capable of language production. In the current studies, we utilized a non-linguistic puppet show paradigm to examine the evaluation of intentional and accidental acts of helping or harming in 10-month-old infants. In Experiment 1 (n=64), infants preferred intentional over accidental helpers but accidental over intentional harmers, suggestive that by this age infants incorporate information about others' intentions into their social evaluations. In Experiment 2 (n=64), infants did not distinguish "negligently" accidental from intentional helpers or harmers, suggestive that infants may find negligent accidents somewhat intentional. In Experiment 3 (n=64), we found that infants preferred truly accidental over negligently accidental harmers, but did not reliably distinguish negligently accidental from truly accidental helpers, consistent with past work with adults and children suggestive that humans are particularly sensitive to negligently accidental harm. Together, these results imply that infants engage in intention-based social evaluation of those who help and harm accidentally, so long as those accidents do not stem from negligence. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  9. The relationship between the availability of the supporting elements of pedestrian with pedestrian crossing facility usage based on user preferences (Case Study corridor of Sumbersari Street, Gajayana Street, MT. Haryono Street, Malang City)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Soetrisno, D. P.

    2017-06-01

    Pedestrian crossing facilities are effective enough to avoid pedestrians with vehicles, but its utilization is still quite low. It indicated that safety is not the only factor that influences a person to utilize the pedestrian crossing facilities. In addition, the availability of supporting elements of the pedestrian is still not quite attention, which is also became a factor that causes the pedestrians doesn’t utilize the pedestrian crossing facilities. Therefore, this research was structured to examine the relationship between the availability of the supporting elements of the pedestrian with pedestrian crossing facility usage based on user preferences. Data collection method used is primary survey consist of observation and the questionnaire. Sampling techniques used is purposive sampling with the number of respondents as many as 211 respondents by using questionnaire with ordinal scales to identify respondents’ consideration level of supporting elements pedestrian and crossing facility utilization factors. The survey is done on 15 crossing facilities area in 3 different locations with the same characteristics of land use in the form of higher education area (university area) and trades and services activities area. The analysis technique used is frequency distribution analysis in order to identify preference pedestrian on the availability of supporting elements of pedestrian and pedestrian crossing facility utilization factors, and chi square analysis is used to analyze the relationship between the availability of the supporting elements of the pedestrian with pedestrian crossing facility utilization. Based on the chi square analysis results with significance 5 % obtained the result that there are six supporting elements of pedestrian having correlation to the factors of pedestrian crossing facility utilization consist of the availability of sidewalk, pedestrian lights, Street Lighting Lamps, Pedestrian Crossing Markings Facilities, Sign Crossings

  10. Spatial Analysis in Determining Physical Factors of Pedestrian Space Livability, Case Study: Pedestrian Space on Jalan Kemasan, Yogyakarta

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fauzi, A. F.; Aditianata, A.

    2018-02-01

    The existence of street as a place to perform various human activities becomes an important issue nowadays. In the last few decades, cars and motorcycles dominate streets in various cities in the world. On the other hand, human activity on the street is the determinant of the city livability. Previous research has pointed out that if there is lots of human activity in the street, then the city will be interesting. Otherwise, if the street has no activity, then the city will be boring. Learning from that statement, now various cities in the world are developing the concept of livable streets. Livable streets shown by diversity of human activities conducted in the streets’ pedestrian space. In Yogyakarta, one of the streets shown diversity of human activities is Jalan Kemasan. This study attempts to determine the physical factors of pedestrian space affecting the livability in Jalan Kemasan Yogyakarta through spatial analysis. Spatial analysis was performed by overlay technique between liveable point (activity diversity) distribution map and variable distribution map. Those physical pedestrian space research variable included element of shading, street vendors, building setback, seat location, divider between street and pedestrian way, and mixed use building function. More diverse the activity of one variable, then those variable are more affected then others. Overlay result then strengthened by field observation to qualitatively ensure the deduction. In the end, this research will provide valuable input for street and pedestrian space planning that is comfortable for human activities.

  11. Cellular automaton simulation of counter flow with paired pedestrians

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hui Xiong

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available Knowledge on pedestrian behavior is the basis to build decision support system for crowd evacuation management in emergency. In this paper, the impact of paired walking behavior on pedestrian counter flow in a channel is studied. The pedestrian walking behaviors are simulated by the cellular automaton model and the pedestrians are classified as single right walker, single left walker, paired right walker, and paired left walker. Single walker can move forward, leftward, rightward or stand still. The paired pedestrians are considered as a combined unit similar to the single walker in terms of route choice and they can move to the same direction simultaneously. It is found that flow and velocity decrease with increase of the paired rate in case of stable density. Simulation results reveal the phase transitions in terms of density from free flow to the unstable flow and from the unstable flow to the congestion flow. However, the critical densities of phase transition are unaffected by the channel size.

  12. Evaluating Countermeasures to Improve Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety

    Science.gov (United States)

    2018-11-01

    Pedestrian crashes have reached an alarming level in the U.S. Different factors could contribute to the occurrence of these crashes at an intersection, including driver errors, the type of maneuver, and pedestrian behaviors. All these factors highlig...

  13. Oriented regions grouping based candidate proposal for infrared pedestrian detection

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Jiangtao; Zhang, Jingai; Li, Huaijiang

    2018-04-01

    Effectively and accurately locating the positions of pedestrian candidates in image is a key task for the infrared pedestrian detection system. In this work, a novel similarity measuring metric is designed. Based on the selective search scheme, the developed similarity measuring metric is utilized to yield the possible locations for pedestrian candidate. Besides this, corresponding diversification strategies are also provided according to the characteristics of the infrared thermal imaging system. Experimental results indicate that the presented scheme can achieve more efficient outputs than the traditional selective search methodology for the infrared pedestrian detection task.

  14. Virtual reality by mobile smartphone: improving child pedestrian safety.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schwebel, David C; Severson, Joan; He, Yefei; McClure, Leslie A

    2017-10-01

    Pedestrian injuries are a leading cause of paediatric injury. Effective, practical and cost-efficient behavioural interventions to teach young children street crossing skills are needed. They must be empirically supported and theoretically based. Virtual reality (VR) offers promise to fill this need and teach child pedestrian safety skills for several reasons, including: (A) repeated unsupervised practice without risk of injury, (B) automated feedback on crossing success or failure, (C) tailoring to child skill levels: (D) appealing and fun training environment, and (E) most recently given technological advances, potential for broad dissemination using mobile smartphone technology. Extending previous work, we will evaluate delivery of an immersive pedestrian VR using mobile smartphones and the Google Cardboard platform, technology enabling standard smartphones to function as immersive VR delivery systems. We will overcome limitations of previous research suggesting children learnt some pedestrian skills after six VR training sessions but did not master adult-level pedestrian skills by implementing a randomised non-inferiority trial with two equal-sized groups of children ages 7-8 years (total N=498). All children will complete baseline, postintervention and 6-month follow-up assessments of pedestrian safety and up to 25 30-min pedestrian safety training trials until they reach adult levels of functioning. Half the children will be randomly assigned to train in Google Cardboard and the other half in a semi-immersive kiosk VR. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) models will assess primary outcomes. If results are as hypothesised, mobile smartphones offer substantial potential to overcome barriers of dissemination and implementation and deliver pedestrian safety training to children worldwide. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

  15. Quantitative analysis of pedestrian safety at uncontrolled multi-lane mid-block crosswalks in China.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Cunbao; Zhou, Bin; Chen, Guojun; Chen, Feng

    2017-11-01

    A lot of pedestrian-vehicle crashes at mid-block crosswalks severely threaten pedestrian's safety around the world. The situations are even worse in China due to low yielding rate of vehicles at crosswalks. In order to quantitatively analyze pedestrian's safety at multi-lane mid-block crosswalks, the number of pedestrian-vehicle conflicts was utilized to evaluate pedestrian's accident risk. Five mid-block crosswalks (Wuhan, China) were videoed to collect data of traffic situation and pedestrian-vehicle conflicts, and the quantity and spatial distribution of pedestrian-vehicle conflicts at multi-lane mid-block crosswalk were analyzed according to lane-based post-encroachment time(LPET). Statistical results indicate that conflicts are mainly concentrated in lane3 and lane6. Percentage of conflict of each lane numbered from 1 to 6 respectively are 4.1%, 13.1%, 19.8%, 8.4%, 19.0%, 28.1%. Conflict rate under different crossing strategies are also counted. Moreover, an order probit (OP) model of pedestrian-vehicle conflict analysis (PVCA) was built to find out the contributions corresponding to those factors (such as traffic volume, vehicle speed, pedestrian crossing behavior, pedestrian refuge, etc.) to pedestrian-vehicle conflicts. The results show that: pedestrian refuge have positive effects on pedestrian safety; on the other hand, high vehicle speed, high traffic volume, rolling gap crossing pattern, and larger pedestrian platoon have negative effects on pedestrian safety. Based on our field observation and PVCA model, the number of conflicts will rise by 2% while the traffic volume increases 200 pcu/h; similarly, if the vehicle speed increases 5km/h, the number of conflicts will rise by 12% accordingly. The research results could be used to evaluate pedestrian safety at multi-lane mid-block crosswalks, and useful to improve pedestrian safety by means of pedestrian safety education, pedestrian refuge setting, vehicle speed limiting, and so on. Copyright © 2017

  16. Modeling Unidirectional Pedestrian Movement: An Investigation of Diffusion Behavior in the Built Environment

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ying Liu

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Unidirectional pedestrian movement is a special phenomenon in the evacuation process of large public buildings and urban environments at pedestrian scale. Several macroscopic models for collective behaviors have been built to predict pedestrian flow. However, current models do not explain the diffusion behavior in pedestrian crowd movement, which can be important in representing spatial-temporal crowd density differentiation in the movement process. This study builds a macroscopic model for describing crowd diffusion behavior and evaluating unidirectional pedestrian flow. The proposed model employs discretization of time and walking speed in geometric distribution to calculate downstream pedestrian crowd flow and analyze movement process based on upstream number of pedestrians and average walking speed. The simulated results are calibrated with video observation data in a baseball stadium to verify the model precision. Statistical results have verified that the proposed pedestrian diffusion model could accurately describe pedestrian macromovement behavior within the margin of error.

  17. Pedestrian count estimation using texture feature with spatial distribution

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hongyu Hu

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available We present a novel pedestrian count estimation approach based on global image descriptors formed from multi-scale texture features that considers spatial distribution. For regions of interest, local texture features are represented based on histograms of multi-scale block local binary pattern, which jointly constitute the feature vector of the whole image. Therefore, to achieve an effective estimation of pedestrian count, principal component analysis is used to reduce the dimension of the global representation features, and a fitting model between image global features and pedestrian count is constructed via support vector regression. The experimental result shows that the proposed method exhibits high accuracy on pedestrian count estimation and can be applied well in the real world.

  18. Effect of prediction on the self-organization of pedestrian counter flow

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wang Ziyang; Zhao Hui; Ma Jian; Qin Yong; Jia Limin

    2012-01-01

    Pedestrians may predict the behavior of others and then adjust their movement accordingly to avoid potential conflicts in advance. Motivated by this fact, we propose a predictive control theory-based pedestrian counter flow model, which describes the predictive mechanism underlying pedestrian self-organization phenomena. In this model, a pedestrian will make in-advance-avoid behavior based on the estimation of future moving gain within a given predictive length to reduce potential conflicts. The future gain in the present model is affected by three factors, i.e. the predictive length, the smooth degree of entrance and the influential area of coming pedestrians. Simulation results of the model show that increasing predictive length has a remarkable effect on reducing conflicts, improving pedestrian velocity, smoothing pedestrian movement and stabilizing the self-organized lanes. When enlarging the influential area of coming pedestrians, pedestrians tend to aggregate to the formed self-organized lanes, which makes the lanes wider and the lane number reduced. Interestingly, moderate enlargement (of the influential area) will reduce conflicts significantly, while excessive enlargement will lead to an increase in conflicts. We also discuss the predictive effect toward the smooth degree of entrance. When there are some formed self-organized lanes in the system, the effect is significant, and it will make the lanes more regular and stable, while when the existing lanes are unstable, the effect has little impact on the system. (paper)

  19. Analysis on influencing factors and decision-making of pedestrian crossing at intersections

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Likun; Wang, Ziyang

    2017-10-01

    The city signal intersection always has complex traffic flow and many traffic accidents. As vulnerable participants, the proportion of traffic accidents involving pedestrians remain high. And a lot of insecure crossing behavior seriously reduce the safety of the intersection. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out in-depth study on the traversing characteristics of pedestrians, reveal the inherent laws of pedestrian crossing, and then put forward targeted measures to improve pedestrian traffic environment, protect pedestrian crossing safety and improve traffic efficiency.

  20. Development of a portable bicycle/pedestrian monitoring system for safety enhancement

    Science.gov (United States)

    Usher, Colin; Daley, W. D. R.

    2015-03-01

    Pedestrians involved in roadway accidents account for nearly 12 percent of all traffic fatalities and 59,000 injuries each year. Most injuries occur when pedestrians attempt to cross roads, and there have been noted differences in accident rates midblock vs. at intersections. Collecting data on pedestrian behavior is a time consuming manual process that is prone to error. This leads to a lack of quality information to guide the proper design of lane markings and traffic signals to enhance pedestrian safety. Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute are developing and testing an automated system that can be rapidly deployed for data collection to support the analysis of pedestrian behavior at intersections and midblock crossings with and without traffic signals. This system will analyze the collected video data to automatically identify and characterize the number of pedestrians and their behavior. It consists of a mobile trailer with four high definition pan-tilt cameras for data collection. The software is custom designed and uses state of the art commercial pedestrian detection algorithms. We will be presenting the system hardware and software design, challenges, and results from the preliminary system testing. Preliminary results indicate the ability to provide representative quantitative data on pedestrian motion data more efficiently than current techniques.

  1. Training strategy for convolutional neural networks in pedestrian gender classification

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ng, Choon-Boon; Tay, Yong-Haur; Goi, Bok-Min

    2017-06-01

    In this work, we studied a strategy for training a convolutional neural network in pedestrian gender classification with limited amount of labeled training data. Unsupervised learning by k-means clustering on pedestrian images was used to learn the filters to initialize the first layer of the network. As a form of pre-training, supervised learning for the related task of pedestrian classification was performed. Finally, the network was fine-tuned for gender classification. We found that this strategy improved the network's generalization ability in gender classification, achieving better test results when compared to random weights initialization and slightly more beneficial than merely initializing the first layer filters by unsupervised learning. This shows that unsupervised learning followed by pre-training with pedestrian images is an effective strategy to learn useful features for pedestrian gender classification.

  2. Dual effects of guide-based guidance on pedestrian evacuation

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ma, Yi, E-mail: yima23-c@my.cityu.edu.hk; Lee, Eric Wai Ming; Shi, Meng

    2017-06-15

    This study investigates the effects of guide-based guidance on the pedestrian evacuation under limited visibility via the simulations based on an extended social force model. The results show that the effects of guides on the pedestrian evacuation under limited visibility are dual, and related to the neighbor density within the visual field. On the one hand, in many cases, the effects of guides are positive, particularly when the neighbor density within the visual field is moderate; in this case, a few guides can already assist the evacuation effectively and efficiently. However, when the neighbor density within the visual field is particularly small or large, the effects of guides may be adverse and make the evacuation time longer. Our results not only provide a new insight into the effects of guides on the pedestrian evacuation under limited visibility, but also give some practical suggestions as to how to assign guides to assist the evacuation under different evacuation conditions. - Highlights: • Extended social force model is used to simulate guided pedestrian evacuation. • Effects of guides on pedestrian evacuation under limited visibility are dual. • Effects of guides on pedestrian evacuation under limited visibility are related to neighbor density within visual field.

  3. Pedestrian Tracking Based on Camshift with Kalman Prediction for Autonomous Vehicles

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lie Guo

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Pedestrian detection and tracking is the key to autonomous vehicle navigation systems avoiding potentially dangerous situations. Firstly, the probability distribution of colour information is established after a pedestrian is located in an image. Then the detected results are utilized to initialize a Kalman filter to predict the possible position of the pedestrian centroid in the future frame. A Camshift tracking algorithm is used to track the pedestrian in the specific search window of the next frame based on the prediction results. The actual position of the pedestrian centroid is output from the Camshift tracking algorithm to update the gain and error covariance matrix of the Kalman filter. Experimental results in real traffic situations show the proposed pedestrian tracking algorithm can achieve good performance even when they are partly occluded in inconsistent illumination circumstances.

  4. Linking pedestrian flow characteristics with stepping locomotion

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Jiayue; Boltes, Maik; Seyfried, Armin; Zhang, Jun; Ziemer, Verena; Weng, Wenguo

    2018-06-01

    While properties of human traffic flow are described by speed, density and flow, the locomotion of pedestrian is based on steps. To relate characteristics of human locomotor system with properties of human traffic flow, this paper aims to connect gait characteristics like step length, step frequency, swaying amplitude and synchronization with speed and density and thus to build a ground for advanced pedestrian models. For this aim, observational and experimental study on the single-file movement of pedestrians at different densities is conducted. Methods to measure step length, step frequency, swaying amplitude and step synchronization are proposed by means of trajectories of the head. Mathematical models for the relations of step length or frequency and speed are evaluated. The problem how step length and step duration are influenced by factors like body height and density is investigated. It is shown that the effect of body height on step length and step duration changes with density. Furthermore, two different types of step in-phase synchronization between two successive pedestrians are observed and the influence of step synchronization on step length is examined.

  5. Disparities in pedestrian streetscape environments by income and race/ethnicity

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Christina M. Thornton

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Growing evidence suggests that microscale pedestrian environment features, such as sidewalk quality, crosswalks, and neighborhood esthetics, may affect residents’ physical activity. This study examined whether disparities in microscale pedestrian features existed between neighborhoods of differing socioeconomic and racial/ethnic composition. Using the validated Microscale Audit of Pedestrian Streetscapes (MAPS, pedestrian environment features were assessed by trained observers along 1/4-mile routes (N=2117 in neighborhoods in three US metropolitan regions (San Diego, Seattle, and Baltimore during 2009–2010. Neighborhoods, defined as Census block groups, were selected to maximize variability in median income and macroscale walkability factors (e.g., density. Mixed-model linear regression analyses explored main and interaction effects of income and race/ethnicity separately by region. Across all three regions, low-income neighborhoods and neighborhoods with a high proportion of racial/ethnic minorities had poorer esthetics and social elements (e.g., graffiti, broken windows, litter than neighborhoods with higher median income or fewer racial/ethnic minorities (p<.05. However, there were also instances where neighborhoods with higher incomes and fewer racial/ethnic minorities had worse or absent pedestrian amenities such as sidewalks, crosswalks, and intersections (p<.05. Overall, disparities in microscale pedestrian features occurred more frequently in residential as compared to mixed-use routes with one or more commercial destination. However, considerable variation existed between regions as to which microscale pedestrian features were unfavorable and whether the unfavorable features were associated with neighborhood income or racial/ethnic composition. The variation in pedestrian streetscapes across cities suggests that findings from single-city studies are not generalizable. Local streetscape audits are recommended to identify disparities

  6. Pedestrian-induced lateral vibrations of footbridges

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ingólfsson, Einar Thór

    by pedestrians during walking on a laterally moving treadmill. Two different conditions are investigated; initially the treadmill is fixed and then it is laterally driven in a sinusoidal motion at varying combinations of frequencies (0.33 – 1.07 Hz) and amplitudes (4.5 – 48mm). The experimental campaign involved...... is triggered. This disproportionate increase in the lateral vibration response is caused by a dynamic interaction between the pedestrian and the laterally moving structure, although the governing mechanism which generates the load is still disputed. In this thesis, a comprehensive literature review...... 71 test subjects who covered approximately 55 km of walking distributed on almost 5000 individual tests. An in-depth analysis of the movement of the pedestrians that participated in the experimental campaign reveal that synchronisation is not a pre-condition for the ix development of large amplitude...

  7. Does Pedestrian Danger Mediate the Relationship between Local Walkability and Active Travel to Work?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sandy J Slater

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available Background: Environmental and policy factors play an important role in influencing people’s lifestyles, physical activity (PA, and risks for developing obesity. Research suggests that more walkable communities are needed to sustain lifelong PA behavior, but there is a need to determine what local built environment features facilitate making being active the easy choice.Purpose: This county-level study examined the association between local walkability (walkability and traffic calming scales, pedestrian danger, and the percent of adults who used active transport to work. Methods: Built environment and PA outcome measures were constructed for the 496 most populous counties representing 74 percent of the U.S. population. GIS-based walkability scales were constructed and include a census of roads located within the counties using 2011 Navteq data. The pedestrian danger index (PDI includes data collected from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System 2009-2011, and measures the likelihood of a pedestrian being hit and killed by a vehicle. Four continuous outcome measures were constructed using 2009-2013 American Community Survey county-level 5-year estimates. The measures represent the percentage of workers living in a county who worked away from home and: 1 walked to work; 2 biked to work; 3 took public transit; and 4 used any form of active transport. Linear regression and mediation analyses were conducted to examine the association between walkability, PDI and active transport. Models accounted for clustering within state with robust standard errors, and controlled for median household income, families with children in poverty, race, ethnicity, urbanicity and region.Results: The walkability scale was significantly negatively associated with the PDI (β=-0.06, 95% CI=-0.111, -0.002. In all models, the PDI was significantly negatively associated with all active travel-related outcomes at the p<0.01 level. The walkability scale was positively

  8. Does Pedestrian Danger Mediate the Relationship between Local Walkability and Active Travel to Work?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Slater, Sandy J; Nicholson, Lisa; Abu Zayd, Haytham; Chriqui, Jamie Friedman

    2016-01-01

    Environmental and policy factors play an important role in influencing people's lifestyles, physical activity (PA), and risks for developing obesity. Research suggests that more walkable communities are needed to sustain lifelong PA behavior, but there is a need to determine what local built environment features facilitate making being active the easy choice. This county-level study examined the association between local walkability (walkability and traffic calming scales), pedestrian danger, and the percent of adults who used active transport to work. Built environment and PA outcome measures were constructed for the 496 most populous counties representing 74% of the U.S. population. Geographic information system-based walkability scales were constructed and include a census of roads located within the counties using 2011 Navteq data. The pedestrian danger index (PDI) includes data collected from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System 2009-2011, and measures the likelihood of a pedestrian being hit and killed by a vehicle. Four continuous outcome measures were constructed using 2009-2013 American Community Survey county-level 5-year estimates. The measures represent the percentage of workers living in a county who worked away from home and (1) walked to work; (2) biked to work; (3) took public transit; and (4) used any form of active transport. Linear regression and mediation analyses were conducted to examine the association between walkability, PDI, and active transport. Models accounted for clustering within state with robust SEs, and controlled for median household income, families with children in poverty, race, ethnicity, urbanicity, and region. The walkability scale was significantly negatively associated with the PDI (β = -0.06, 95% CI = -0.111, -0.002). In all models, the PDI was significantly negatively associated with all active travel-related outcomes at the p walkability scale was positively associated with all four outcomes at the p

  9. Young drivers' perception of adult and child pedestrians in potential street-crossing situations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ābele, Līva; Haustein, Sonja; Møller, Mette

    2018-04-03

    Despite overall improvements in road traffic safety, pedestrian accidents continue to be a serious public health problem. Due to lack of experience, limited cognitive and motoric skills, and smaller size, children have a higher injury risk as pedestrians than adults. To what extent drivers adjust their driving behaviour to children's higher vulnerability is largely unknown. To determine whether young male drivers' behaviour and scanning pattern differs when approaching a child and an adult pedestrian in a potential street-crossing situation, sixty-five young (18-24) male drivers' speed, lateral position and eye movements were recorded in a driving simulator. Results showed that fewer drivers responded by slowing down and that drivers had a higher driving speed when approaching a child pedestrian, although the time of the first fixation on both types of pedestrians was the same. However, drivers drove farther away from a child than an adult pedestrian. Additionally, fewer drivers who did not slow down fixated on the speedometer while approaching the child pedestrian. The results show that young drivers behave differently when approaching a child and an adult pedestrian, though not in a way that appropriately accounts for the limitations of a child pedestrian. A better understanding of how drivers respond to different types of pedestrians and why could contribute to the development of pedestrian detection and emergency braking systems. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  10. Investigating the risk factors associated with pedestrian injury severity in Illinois.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pour-Rouholamin, Mahdi; Zhou, Huaguo

    2016-06-01

    Pedestrians are known as the most vulnerable road users, which means their needs and safety require specific attention in strategic plans. Given the fact that pedestrians are more prone to higher injury severity levels compared to other road users, this study aims to investigate the risk factors associated with various levels of injury severity that pedestrians experience in Illinois. Ordered-response models are used to analyze single-vehicle, single-pedestrian crash data from 2010 to 2013 in Illinois. As a measure of net change in the effect of significant variables, average direct pseudo-elasticities are calculated that can be further used to prioritize safety countermeasures. A model comparison using AIC and BIC is also provided to compare the performance of the studied ordered-response models. The results recognized many variables associated with severe injuries: older pedestrians (more than 65years old), pedestrians not wearing contrasting clothing, adult drivers (16-24), drunk drivers, time of day (20:00 to 05:00), divided highways, multilane highways, darkness, and heavy vehicles. On the other hand, crossing the street at crosswalks, older drivers (more than 65years old), urban areas, and presence of traffic control devices (signal and sign) are associated with decreased probability of severe injuries. The comparison between three proposed ordered-response models shows that the partial proportional odds (PPO) model outperforms the conventional ordered (proportional odds-PO) model and generalized ordered logit model (GOLM). Based on the findings, stricter rules to address DUI driving is suggested. Educational programs need to focus on older pedestrians given the increasing number of older people in Illinois in the upcoming years. Pedestrians should be educated to use pedestrian crosswalks and contrasting clothing at night. In terms of engineering countermeasures, installation of crosswalks where pedestrian activity is high seems a promising practice

  11. Study on bi-directional pedestrian movement using ant algorithms

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gokce, Sibel; Kayacan, Ozhan

    2016-01-01

    A cellular automata model is proposed to simulate bi-directional pedestrian flow. Pedestrian movement is investigated by using ant algorithms. Ants communicate with each other by dropping a chemical, called a pheromone, on the substrate while crawling forward. Similarly, it is considered that oppositely moving pedestrians drop ‘visual pheromones’ on their way and the visual pheromones might cause attractive or repulsive interactions. This pheromenon is introduced into modelling the pedestrians’ walking preference. In this way, the decision-making process of pedestrians will be based on ‘the instinct of following’. At some densities, the relationships of velocity–density and flux–density are analyzed for different evaporation rates of visual pheromones. Lane formation and phase transition are observed for certain evaporation rates of visual pheromones. (paper)

  12. Improving pedestrian facilities in congested urban areas: a case study of Chennai city

    Science.gov (United States)

    Subramanyam, B.; Prasanna Kumar, R.

    2017-07-01

    Traffic congestion and lack of public pedestrian space are some problems faced by most urban metropolises. Conventionally walking has been a mode of transportation in Indian cities. The percentage of pedestrians may vary from 16 to 57 depending upon the city. Encounters between vehicular traffic and pedestrian traffic are at its rise currently. Rapid industrialization and urbanization in India has resulted in neglecting of pedestrian facilities. Consequently pedestrian are at greater risk for their safety more especially in the commercial zones of large cities. A change in perspective spotlight will create a sense of awareness that the pedestrian traffic is also vital as the vehicular traffic. Soothing the traffic would moderately cut the driving expediency but the pedestrians will get a much safer and peaceful route to their terminuses. Safety and comfort are the two pans of a balance while considering the pedestrian traffic. Considering these aspects, this study deals a study in improving pedestrian facilities by analysing the existing skeleton of the selected locations. The adequacy of facility is checked based on IRC latest guidelines and counteractive measures are postulated.

  13. Measuring accident risk exposure for pedestrians in different micro-environments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lassarre, Sylvain; Papadimitriou, Eleonora; Yannis, George; Golias, John

    2007-11-01

    Pedestrians are mainly exposed to the risk of road accident when crossing a road in urban areas. Traditionally in the road safety field, the risk of accident for pedestrian is estimated as a rate of accident involvement per unit of time spent on the road network. The objective of this research is to develop an approach of accident risk based on the concept of risk exposure used in environmental epidemiology, such as in the case of exposure to pollutants. This type of indicator would be useful for comparing the effects of urban transportation policy scenarios on pedestrian safety. The first step is to create an indicator of pedestrians' exposure, which is based on motorised vehicles' "concentration" by lane and also takes account of traffic speed and time spent to cross. This is applied to two specific micro-environments: junctions and mid-block locations. A model of pedestrians' crossing behaviour along a trip is then developed, based on a hierarchical choice between junctions and mid-block locations and taking account of origin and destination, traffic characteristics and pedestrian facilities. Finally, a complete framework is produced for modelling pedestrians' exposure in the light of their crossing behaviour. The feasibility of this approach is demonstrated on an artificial network and a first set of results is obtained from the validation of the models in observational studies.

  14. Mapping patterns of pedestrian fatal accidents in Israel

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Prato, Carlo Giacomo; Gitelman, Victoria; Bekhor, Shlomo

    2012-01-01

    This study intends to provide insight into pedestrian accidents by uncovering their patterns in order to design preventive measures and to allocate resources for identified problems. Kohonen neural networks are applied to a database of pedestrian fatal accidents occurred during the four-year peri...

  15. Trajectory Analysis and Prediction for Improved Pedestrian Safety

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Møgelmose, Andreas; Trivedi, Mohan M.; Moeslund, Thomas B.

    2015-01-01

    This paper presents a monocular and purely vision based pedestrian trajectory tracking and prediction framework with integrated map-based hazard inference. In Advanced Driver Assistance systems research, a lot of effort has been put into pedestrian detection over the last decade, and several pede...

  16. Pedestrian Urban Safety System and Comfort at Traffic Signals PUSSYCATS : new pedestrian facilities : technique, observations and opinions, a drive-project in France, the UK and The Netherlands.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Levelt, P.B.M.

    1994-01-01

    PUSSYCATS (Pedestrian Urban Safety System and Comfort at Traffic Signals) is a new system incorporating technical improvements better adapted to pedestrians needs and behaviour. A Kerb-side detector mat replaces the push buttons, with infrared sensors detecting the presence of pedestrians on the

  17. [Parental practices and pedestrian risk behaviors in Chilean adolescents].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Herrera, Andrea C; Repetto, Paula B

    2014-08-01

    Traffic accidents are the second leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults in Chile. However, few studies have examined this behavior among this age group. Parental practices have a great influence on risk behaviors in adolescents, such as substance use, sexuality and violence, among others. Specifically, we propose that these practices will influence pedestrian risk behaviors among adolescents. To study the role of parental practices such as mother and father support, and behavioral control (monitoring and presence of rules) in pedestrian risk behaviors of teenagers. A sample of 470 adolescents attending schools in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile were studied. They answered a self-administered questionnaire in which they were asked about parental practices and pedestrian risk behaviors. Analyses were performed using descriptive and inferential statistics, using multiple regression. Paternal support and the presence of rules were protective factors for pedestrian risky behaviors. However, maternal support or monitoring did not influence these behaviors. Parental practices influence pedestrian behaviors of teenagers. The study provides further evidence for the importance of these practices in the development of behavioral self-regulation.

  18. A heterogeneous lattice gas model for simulating pedestrian evacuation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guo, Xiwei; Chen, Jianqiao; Zheng, Yaochen; Wei, Junhong

    2012-02-01

    Based on the cellular automata method (CA model) and the mobile lattice gas model (MLG model), we have developed a heterogeneous lattice gas model for simulating pedestrian evacuation processes in an emergency. A local population density concept is introduced first. The update rule in the new model depends on the local population density and the exit crowded degree factor. The drift D, which is one of the key parameters influencing the evacuation process, is allowed to change according to the local population density of the pedestrians. Interactions including attraction, repulsion, and friction between every two pedestrians and those between a pedestrian and the building wall are described by a nonlinear function of the corresponding distance, and the repulsion forces increase sharply as the distances get small. A critical force of injury is introduced into the model, and its effects on the evacuation process are investigated. The model proposed has heterogeneous features as compared to the MLG model or the basic CA model. Numerical examples show that the model proposed can capture the basic features of pedestrian evacuation, such as clogging and arching phenomena.

  19. A FORM ANALYSIS OF JAPANESE PEDESTRIAN DECKS AND EUROPEAN PLAZAS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    ANDO Naomi

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available This study compares Japanese pedestrian decks and European plazas as public pedestrian spaces. The characteristics of both types of spaces will be clarified through a schematic analysis. The connections of these spaces with their surroundings will also be analyzed. Further, the spatial image of these spaces are discussed. Pedestrian spaces in Romania will be discussed as well.

  20. The flashing right turn signal with pedestrian indication : human factors studies to understand the potential of a new signal to increase awareness of and attention to crossing pedestrians.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2015-12-01

    The flashing pedestrian indicator (FPI) is intended to alert turning drivers to the potential presence of : pedestrians in the roadway, facilitate scanning in the likely direction of pedestrians, and encourage caution and : yielding behavior in respo...

  1. Automatic Pedestrian Crossing Detection and Impairment Analysis Based on Mobile Mapping System

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, X.; Zhang, Y.; Li, Q.

    2017-09-01

    Pedestrian crossing, as an important part of transportation infrastructures, serves to secure pedestrians' lives and possessions and keep traffic flow in order. As a prominent feature in the street scene, detection of pedestrian crossing contributes to 3D road marking reconstruction and diminishing the adverse impact of outliers in 3D street scene reconstruction. Since pedestrian crossing is subject to wearing and tearing from heavy traffic flow, it is of great imperative to monitor its status quo. On this account, an approach of automatic pedestrian crossing detection using images from vehicle-based Mobile Mapping System is put forward and its defilement and impairment are analyzed in this paper. Firstly, pedestrian crossing classifier is trained with low recall rate. Then initial detections are refined by utilizing projection filtering, contour information analysis, and monocular vision. Finally, a pedestrian crossing detection and analysis system with high recall rate, precision and robustness will be achieved. This system works for pedestrian crossing detection under different situations and light conditions. It can recognize defiled and impaired crossings automatically in the meanwhile, which facilitates monitoring and maintenance of traffic facilities, so as to reduce potential traffic safety problems and secure lives and property.

  2. A Model for Assessing Pedestrian Corridors. Application to Vitoria-Gasteiz City (Spain

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Javier Delso

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available From a mobility perspective, walking is considered to be the most sustainable transport mode. One of the consequences of motor-oriented urban configuration on pedestrian mobility is urban fragmentation, which affects sustainability in cities. In this paper, we use a natural-based approach to landscape fragmentation and connectivity (inherited from landscape ecology for pedestrian mobility planning. Our aim is to design a useful methodology to identify priority pedestrian corridors, and to assess the effects of implementing barrier-free pedestrian corridors in the city. For this purpose, we developed a method that integrates Geographical Information Systems (GIS network analysis with kernel density methods, which are commonly used for designating habitat corridors. It was applied to Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain. Pedestrian mobility was assessed by comparison of travel times between different scenarios. Results show that the implementation of pedestrian corridors reduces travel time by approximately 6%. Thus, an intervention in a small percentage of the city’s street network could considerably reduce pedestrian travel times. The proposed methodology is a useful tool for urban and transport planners to improve pedestrian mobility and manage motorised traffic.

  3. The importance of rotational kinematics in pedestrian head to windshield impacts

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Mordaka, J.; Kleiven, S.; Schijndel-de Nooij, M. van; Lange, R. de; Casanova, L.J.G.; Carter, E.L.; Holst, H. von

    2007-01-01

    The objective of the present study was to analyze the effect of angular kinematics on head injury in pedestrian head-to-windshield impacts. Three cases of pedestrian head impacts were simulated with FE head and windshield models. The initial impact conditions were obtained from pedestrian accident

  4. Cellular automaton simulation of pedestrian counter flow with different walk velocities

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Weng, W. G.; Chen, T.; Yuan, H. Y.; Fan, W. C.

    2006-01-01

    This paper presents a cellular automaton model without step back for pedestrian dynamics considering the human behaviors which can make judgments in some complex situations. This model can simulate pedestrian movement with different walk velocities through update at different time-step intervals. Two kinds of boundary conditions including periodic and open boundary for pedestrian counter flow are considered, and their dynamical characteristics are discussed. Simulation results show that for periodic boundary condition there are three phases of pedestrian patterns, i.e., freely moving phase, lane formation phase, and perfectly stopped phase at some certain total density ranges. In the stage of lane formation, the phenomenon that pedestrians exceed those with lower walk velocity through a narrow walkway can be found. For open boundary condition, at some certain entrance densities, there are two steady states of pedestrian patterns; but the first is metastable. Spontaneous fluctuations can break the first steady state, i.e., freely moving phase, and run into the second steady state, i.e., perfectly stopped phase

  5. Macro-level safety analysis of pedestrian crashes in Shanghai, China.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Xuesong; Yang, Junguang; Lee, Chris; Ji, Zhuoran; You, Shikai

    2016-11-01

    Pedestrian safety has become one of the most important issues in the field of traffic safety. This study aims at investigating the association between pedestrian crash frequency and various predictor variables including roadway, socio-economic, and land-use features. The relationships were modeled using the data from 263 Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZs) within the urban area of Shanghai - the largest city in China. Since spatial correlation exists among the zonal-level data, Bayesian Conditional Autoregressive (CAR) models with seven different spatial weight features (i.e. (a) 0-1 first order, adjacency-based, (b) common boundary-length-based, (c) geometric centroid-distance-based, (d) crash-weighted centroid-distance-based, (e) land use type, adjacency-based, (f) land use intensity, adjacency-based, and (g) geometric centroid-distance-order) were developed to characterize the spatial correlations among TAZs. Model results indicated that the geometric centroid-distance-order spatial weight feature, which was introduced in macro-level safety analysis for the first time, outperformed all the other spatial weight features. Population was used as the surrogate for pedestrian exposure, and had a positive effect on pedestrian crashes. Other significant factors included length of major arterials, length of minor arterials, road density, average intersection spacing, percentage of 3-legged intersections, and area of TAZ. Pedestrian crashes were higher in TAZs with medium land use intensity than in TAZs with low and high land use intensity. Thus, higher priority should be given to TAZs with medium land use intensity to improve pedestrian safety. Overall, these findings can help transportation planners and managers understand the characteristics of pedestrian crashes and improve pedestrian safety. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  6. TINGKAT KENYAMANAN JALUR PEDESTRIAN DI KAWASAN SIMPANG LIMA KOTA SEMARANG BERDASARKAN PERSEPSI PENGGUNA

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andi Purnomo

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available The comfortability of access from each region in big cities has led to the rapid increasing of regional mobility.The mobility incude the motorists and also pedestrians. Pedestrian path is a container or space for pedestrian activities and activities to provide services to pedestrians so as to improve the smoothness, safety, and comfort for pedestrians. Convenience is one of the vital values that should be enjoyed by people when doing activities. Pedestrian path in Semarang in Simpang Lima area itself is fairly crowded, and has been laid out in such a way for vendors. Crowd arising from the existence of street vendors sometimes make some people feel less comfortable to pass through. Problems that occur will be observed and analyzed, namely the level of comfort in the pedestrian path in Simpang Lima area based on user perception. The method used is descriptive qualitative theory describing the pedestrian path and direct observation to the object observed coupled with interviewing some respondents.

  7. Pedestrian fatality risk as a function of car impact speed.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rosén, Erik; Sander, Ulrich

    2009-05-01

    Knowledge of the amount of violence tolerated by the human body is essential when developing and implementing pedestrian safety strategies. When estimating the potential benefits of new countermeasures, the pedestrian fatality risk as a function of impact speed is of particular importance. Although this function has been analysed previously, we state that a proper understanding does not exist. Based on the largest in-depth, pedestrian accident study undertaken to date, we derive an improved risk function for adult pedestrians hit by the front of passenger cars. Our results show far lower fatality risks than generally reported in the traffic safety literature. This discrepancy is primarily explained by sample bias towards severe injury accidents in earlier studies. Nevertheless, a strong dependence on impact speed is found, with the fatality risk at 50 km/h being more than twice as high as the risk at 40 km/h and more than five times higher than the risk at 30 km/h. Our findings should have important implications for the development of pedestrian accident countermeasures worldwide. In particular, the scope of future pedestrian safety policies and research should be broadened to include accidents with impact speeds exceeding 50 km/h.

  8. Pedestrian Detection and Tracking from Low-Resolution Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Thermal Imagery

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yalong Ma

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available Driven by the prominent thermal signature of humans and following the growing availability of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, more and more research efforts have been focusing on the detection and tracking of pedestrians using thermal infrared images recorded from UAVs. However, pedestrian detection and tracking from the thermal images obtained from UAVs pose many challenges due to the low-resolution of imagery, platform motion, image instability and the relatively small size of the objects. This research tackles these challenges by proposing a pedestrian detection and tracking system. A two-stage blob-based approach is first developed for pedestrian detection. This approach first extracts pedestrian blobs using the regional gradient feature and geometric constraints filtering and then classifies the detected blobs by using a linear Support Vector Machine (SVM with a hybrid descriptor, which sophisticatedly combines Histogram of Oriented Gradient (HOG and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT features in order to achieve accurate detection. This research further proposes an approach for pedestrian tracking. This approach employs the feature tracker with the update of detected pedestrian location to track pedestrian objects from the registered videos and extracts the motion trajectory data. The proposed detection and tracking approaches have been evaluated by multiple different datasets, and the results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. This research is expected to significantly benefit many transportation applications, such as the multimodal traffic performance measure, pedestrian behavior study and pedestrian-vehicle crash analysis. Future work will focus on using fused thermal and visual images to further improve the detection efficiency and effectiveness.

  9. Proposing a Revised Pedestrian Walkway Level of Service Based on Characteristics of Pedestrian Interactive Behaviours in China

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xiaonian Shan

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available The objective of this study is to analyse characteristics of Pedestrian Interactive Behaviours (PIBs in order to propose a revised pedestrian walkway Level of Service (LOS in China. Field data on overtaking and evasive behaviours were collected at a metro station walkway in Shanghai, China to calculate macro and micro indicators. Occurrence intensities of these two PIBs initially increased with moderate density and later decreased with high density that reduced available space. PIBs were also analysed in terms of sideways behaviours to account for the varying difficulties of PIBs at different densities. It was found that available space for PIBs was the main factor contributing to the intensity features. Moreover, the different space demands of the two PIBs resulted in different features between them. Finally, a revised pedestrian walkway LOS was proposed based on the macro and micro characteristics of PIBs in China.

  10. Impact of social and technological distraction on pedestrian crossing behaviour: an observational study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thompson, Leah L; Rivara, Frederick P; Ayyagari, Rajiv C; Ebel, Beth E

    2013-08-01

    The objective of the present work was to study the impact of technological and social distraction on cautionary behaviours and crossing times in pedestrians. Pedestrians were observed at 20 high-risk intersections during 1 of 3 randomly assigned time windows in 2012. Observers recorded demographic and behavioural information, including use of a mobile device (talking on the phone, text messaging, or listening to music). We examined the association between distraction and crossing behaviours, adjusting for age and gender. All multivariate analyses were conducted with random effect logistic regression (binary outcomes) and random effect linear regression (continuous outcomes), accounting for clustering by site. Observers recorded crossing behaviours for 1102 pedestrians. Nearly one-third (29.8%) of all pedestrians performed a distracting activity while crossing. Distractions included listening to music (11.2%), text messaging (7.3%) and using a handheld phone (6.2%). Text messaging, mobile phone use and talking with a companion increased crossing time. Texting pedestrians took 1.87 additional seconds (18.0%) to cross the average intersection (3.4 lanes), compared to undistracted pedestrians. Texting pedestrians were 3.9 times more likely than undistracted pedestrians to display at least 1 unsafe crossing behaviour (disobeying the lights, crossing mid-intersection, or failing to look both ways). Pedestrians listening to music walked more than half a second (0.54) faster across the average intersection than undistracted pedestrians. Distracting activity is common among pedestrians, even while crossing intersections. Technological and social distractions increase crossing times, with text messaging associated with the highest risk. Our findings suggest the need for intervention studies to reduce risk of pedestrian injury.

  11. Influence of approaching tram on behaviour of pedestrians in signalised crosswalks in Poland.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kruszyna, Maciej; Rychlewski, Jeremi

    2013-06-01

    Research done in two Polish cities has uncovered an influence of an approaching tram on pedestrian behaviour. The measurements were done by counting pedestrians waiting for a green signal, crossing on red signal safely, or crossing on red signal taking a risk of being hit by a car, differentiating between pedestrians attempting to board a public transport vehicle and other pedestrians. It was expected, that pedestrian behaviour might be influenced by traffic control predictability, therefore two cities were chosen for the task: Wrocław with fixed time traffic control and Poznań with a majority of traffic responsive traffic signals. Data from the measurements was compared in order to find behaviour patterns - the comparison led to a conclusion, that an attempt to get on board of an incoming public transport vehicle can be a major cause for pedestrians to violate a red signal, including an increase of unsafe behaviour. These pedestrians may provoke other pedestrians to cross on a red signal. On the other hand if traffic control guarantees boarding the public transport vehicle, passengers-to-be may be even more obedient than other pedestrians. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  12. Assessment methodologies for forward looking integrated pedestrian systems and further extension to cyclist safety: experimental and virtual testing for pedestrian protection

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Ferrer, A.; Hair-Buijssen, S.H.H.M. de; Zander, O.; Fredriksson, R.; Schaub, S.; Nuss, F.; Caspar, M.

    2015-01-01

    Pedestrians and cyclists are the most unprotected road users and their injury risk in case of accidents is significantly higher than for other road users. The understanding of the influence and sensitivity between important variables describing a pedestrian crash is key for the development of more

  13. 32 CFR 636.26 - Pedestrian's rights and duties.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-07-01

    ... ENFORCEMENT AND CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS MOTOR VEHICLE TRAFFIC SUPERVISION (SPECIFIC INSTALLATIONS) Fort Stewart, Georgia § 636.26 Pedestrian's rights and duties. (a) Pedestrians will obey all traffic control... signals are not in place or not in operation, the driver of a vehicle will yield the right of way, by...

  14. Spatiotemporal approaches to analyzing pedestrian fatalities: the case of Cali, Colombia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fox, Lani; Serre, Marc L; Lippmann, Steven J; Rodríguez, Daniel A; Bangdiwala, Shrikant I; Gutiérrez, María Isabel; Escobar, Guido; Villaveces, Andrés

    2015-01-01

    Injuries among pedestrians are a major public health concern in Colombian cities such as Cali. This is one of the first studies in Latin America to apply Bayesian maximum entropy (BME) methods to visualize and produce fine-scale, highly accurate estimates of citywide pedestrian fatalities. The purpose of this study is to determine the BME method that best estimates pedestrian mortality rates and reduces statistical noise. We further utilized BME methods to identify and differentiate spatial patterns and persistent versus transient pedestrian mortality hotspots. In this multiyear study, geocoded pedestrian mortality data from the Cali Injury Surveillance System (2008 to 2010) and census data were utilized to accurately visualize and estimate pedestrian fatalities. We investigated the effects of temporal and spatial scales, addressing issues arising from the rarity of pedestrian fatality events using 3 BME methods (simple kriging, Poisson kriging, and uniform model Bayesian maximum entropy). To reduce statistical noise while retaining a fine spatial and temporal scale, data were aggregated over 9-month incidence periods and censal sectors. Based on a cross-validation of BME methods, Poisson kriging was selected as the best BME method. Finally, the spatiotemporal and urban built environment characteristics of Cali pedestrian mortality hotspots were linked to intervention measures provided in Mead et al.'s (2014) pedestrian mortality review. The BME space-time analysis in Cali resulted in maps displaying hotspots of high pedestrian fatalities extending over small areas with radii of 0.25 to 1.1 km and temporal durations of 1 month to 3 years. Mapping the spatiotemporal distribution of pedestrian mortality rates identified high-priority areas for prevention strategies. The BME results allow us to identify possible intervention strategies according to the persistence and built environment of the hotspot; for example, through enforcement or long-term environmental

  15. Effects of Switching Behavior for the Attraction on Pedestrian Dynamics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kwak, Jaeyoung; Jo, Hang-Hyun; Luttinen, Tapio; Kosonen, Iisakki

    2015-01-01

    Walking is a fundamental activity of our daily life not only for moving to other places but also for interacting with surrounding environment. While walking on the streets, pedestrians can be aware of attractions like shopping windows. They can be influenced by the attractions and some of them might shift their attention towards the attractions, namely switching behavior. As a first step to incorporate the switching behavior, this study investigates collective effects of switching behavior for an attraction by developing a behavioral model. Numerical simulations exhibit different patterns of pedestrian behavior depending on the strength of the social influence and the average length of stay. When the social influence is strong along with a long length of stay, a saturated phase can be defined at which all the pedestrians have visited the attraction. If the social influence is not strong enough, an unsaturated phase appears where one can observe that some pedestrians head for the attraction while others walk in their desired direction. These collective patterns of pedestrian behavior are summarized in a phase diagram by comparing the number of pedestrians who visited the attraction to the number of passersby near the attraction. Measuring the marginal benefits with respect to the strength of the social influence and the average length of stay enables us to identify under what conditions enhancing these variables would be more effective. The findings from this study can be understood in the context of the pedestrian facility management, for instance, for retail stores.

  16. Literature review on vehicle travel speeds and pedestrian injuries

    Science.gov (United States)

    1999-10-01

    The relationship between vehicle travel speeds and resulting pedestrian injury was reviewed in the literature and in existing data sets. Results indicated that higher vehicle speeds are strongly associated with both a greater likelihood of pedestrian...

  17. Pedestrian Safety Treatments for Signalized Intersections : Training Course Development

    Science.gov (United States)

    2017-11-01

    When drivers make left turns during a permissive turn phase, they must yield to pedestrians as well as oncoming through vehicles. Left-turning drivers sometimes overlook pedestrians in the crosswalk while watching the opposing intersection approach. ...

  18. Application of demographic analysis to pedestrian safety : final report.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2017-04-01

    In recent years, many departments of transportation in the US have invested additional resources to enhance : pedestrian safety. However, there is still a need to effectively and systematically address the pedestrian experience : in low-income areas....

  19. Young drivers' perception of adult and child pedestrians in potential street-crossing situations

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Abele, Liva; Haustein, Sonja; Møller, Mette

    2018-01-01

    Despite overall improvements in road traffic safety, pedestrian accidents continue to be a serious public health problem. Due to lack of experience, limited cognitive and motoric skills, and smaller size, children have a higher injury risk as pedestrians than adults. To what extent drivers adjust...... that appropriately accounts for the limitations of a child pedestrian. A better understanding of how drivers respond to different types of pedestrians and why could contribute to the development of pedestrian detection and emergency braking systems....

  20. Investigation of pedestrian crashes on two-way two-lane rural roads in Ethiopia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tulu, Getu Segni; Washington, Simon; Haque, Md Mazharul; King, Mark J

    2015-05-01

    Understanding pedestrian crash causes and contributing factors in developing countries is critically important as they account for about 55% of all traffic crashes. Not surprisingly, considerable attention in the literature has been paid to road traffic crash prediction models and methodologies in developing countries of late. Despite this interest, there are significant challenges confronting safety managers in developing countries. For example, in spite of the prominence of pedestrian crashes occurring on two-way two-lane rural roads, it has proven difficult to develop pedestrian crash prediction models due to a lack of both traffic and pedestrian exposure data. This general lack of available data has further hampered identification of pedestrian crash causes and subsequent estimation of pedestrian safety performance functions. The challenges are similar across developing nations, where little is known about the relationship between pedestrian crashes, traffic flow, and road environment variables on rural two-way roads, and where unique predictor variables may be needed to capture the unique crash risk circumstances. This paper describes pedestrian crash safety performance functions for two-way two-lane rural roads in Ethiopia as a function of traffic flow, pedestrian flows, and road geometry characteristics. In particular, random parameter negative binomial model was used to investigate pedestrian crashes. The models and their interpretations make important contributions to road crash analysis and prevention in developing countries. They also assist in the identification of the contributing factors to pedestrian crashes, with the intent to identify potential design and operational improvements. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  1. Modeling the Perceptions and Preferences of Pedestrians on Crossing Facilities

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hongwei Guo

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Pedestrian’s street-crossing behaviour has a significant effect on traffic performance and safety. The crossing behaviour is determined by human factors and environmental factors. Aiming at examining the pedestrian perceptions toward crossing facilities and preferences for crossing locations, an observational study of pedestrian crossing behaviour at urban street is conducted. The perceptions and preferences of pedestrians are collected using stated preference technique. A specific questionnaire is designed to conduct the stated preference survey. A multinomial logit model is proposed to describe the perceptions and preferences of pedestrians on crossing facilities and locations. The sensitivity analysis is performed to discuss the influence of various factors on crossing behaviour. Then the relationship between crossing locations and crossing distances is analyzed by a new proposed method. With the theoretical analysis, the engineering solutions considering pedestrian behaviour are suggested. The results are helpful to design human-centered crossing facilities in urban traffic.

  2. Real-time pedestrian detection with the videos of car camera

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yunling Zhang

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available Pedestrians in the vehicle path are in danger of being hit, thus causing severe injury to pedestrians and vehicle occupants. Therefore, real-time pedestrian detection with the video of vehicle-mounted camera is of great significance to vehicle–pedestrian collision warning and traffic safety of self-driving car. In this article, a real-time scheme was proposed based on integral channel features and graphics processing unit. The proposed method does not need to resize the input image. Moreover, the computationally expensive convolution of the detectors and the input image was converted into the dot product of two larger matrixes, which can be computed effectively using a graphics processing unit. The experiments showed that the proposed method could be employed to detect pedestrians in the video of car camera at 20+ frames per second with acceptable error rates. Thus, it can be applied in real-time detection tasks with the videos of car camera.

  3. Study on the Weaving Behavior of High Density Bidirectional Pedestrian Flow

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lishan Sun

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Weaving area may be the critical risk place in the subway transfer station. When improving service level of the weaving area, the characteristic of pedestrian weaving behavior should be systemically discussed. This paper described the mechanism of weaving behavior on high density pedestrian which was analyzed by the collection data of controlled experiment. Different weaving behaviors were contrasted due to different volumes in the bidirectional passageway. Video analysis was conducted to extract pedestrian moving behavior and calibrate the movement data with SIMI Motion. Influence of the high density weaving pedestrian was studied based on the statistical results (e.g., velocity, walking distance, and journey time. Furthermore, the quantitative method by speed analysis was announced to discriminate the conflict point. The scopes of weaving area and impact area at different pedestrian volumes were revealed to analyze the pedestrian turning angle. The paper concluded that walking pedestrians are significantly influenced by the weaving conflict and trend to turn the moving direction to avoid the conflict in weaving area; the ratio of stable weaving area and impact area is 2 to 3. The conclusions do provide a method to evaluate the transfer station safety and a facility layout guidance to improve the capacity.

  4. Rapid detection and identification of pedestrian impacts using a distributed sensor network

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Andrew C.; Chang, Fu-Kuo

    2005-05-01

    Pedestrian fatalities from automobile accidents often occur as a result of head injuries suffered from impacts with an automobile front end. Active pedestrian protection systems with proper pedestrian recognition algorithms can protect pedestrians from such head trauma. An investigation was conducted to assess the feasibility of using a network of piezoelectric sensors mounted on the front bumper beam of an automobile to discriminate between impacts with "pedestrian" and "non-pedestrian" objects. This information would be used to activate a safety device (e.g., external airbag or pop-up hood) to provide protection for the vulnerable pedestrian. An analytical foundation for the object-bumper impact problem will be presented, as well as the classical beam impact theory. The mechanical waves that propagate in the structure from an external impact contain a wealth of information about the specifics of a particular impact -- object mass, size, impact speed, etc. -- but most notably the object stiffness, which identifies the impacted object. Using the frequency content of the sensor signals, it can be shown that impacts with a "pedestrian" object of varying size, weight, and speed can be easily differentiated from impacts with other "non-pedestrian" objects. Simulation results will illustrate this phenomenon, and experimental tests will verify the results. A comprehensive series of impact tests were performed for validation, using both a stationary front bumper with a drop-pendulum impactor and a moving car with stationary impact objects. Results from both tests will be presented.

  5. Increasing of visibility on the pedestrian crossing by the additional lighting systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baleja, Richard; Bos, Petr; Novak, Tomas; Sokansky, Karel; Hanusek, Tomas

    2017-09-01

    Pedestrian crossings are critical places for road accidents between pedestrians and motor vehicles. For this reason, it is very important to increase attention when the pedestrian crossings are designed and it is necessary to take into account all factors that may contribute to higher safety. Additional lighting systems for pedestrian crossings are one of them and the lighting systems must fulfil the requirements for higher visibility from the point of view of car drivers from both directions. This paper describes the criteria for the suitable additional lighting system on pedestrian crossings. Generally, it means vertical illuminance on the pedestrian crossing from the driver’s view, horizontal illuminance on the crossing and horizontal illuminance both in front of and behind the crossing placed on the road and their acceptable ratios. The article also describes the choice of the colours of the light (correlated colour temperature) and its influence on visibility. As a part of the article, there are case designs of additional lighting systems for pedestrian crossings and measurements from realized additional lighting systems by luxmeters and luminance cameras and their evaluation.

  6. Using Cellular Automata to Investigate Pedestrian Conflicts with Vehicles in Crosswalk at Signalized Intersection

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xiaomeng Li

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available The operational efficiency and safety of pedestrian flows at intersections is an important aspect of urban traffic. Particularly, conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles in crosswalk are one of the most influential factors for intersection safety. This paper presents a cellular automata model that simulates pedestrian and vehicle crossing behaviors at signalized intersections. Through the simulation, we investigate the effects of different pedestrian signal timing and crosswalk widths on the crosswalk capacity, the number of traffic conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles, and pedestrian delay due to the conflicts. The simulation results indicate that the cellular automata is an effective simulation platform for investigating complex pedestrian-related traffic phenomenon at signalized intersections.

  7. A least-effort principle based model for heterogeneous pedestrian flow considering overtaking behavior

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Chi; Ye, Rui; Lian, Liping; Song, Weiguo; Zhang, Jun; Lo, Siuming

    2018-05-01

    In the context of global aging, how to design traffic facilities for a population with a different age composition is of high importance. For this purpose, we propose a model based on the least effort principle to simulate heterogeneous pedestrian flow. In the model, the pedestrian is represented by a three-disc shaped agent. We add a new parameter to realize pedestrians' preference to avoid changing their direction of movement too quickly. The model is validated with numerous experimental data on unidirectional pedestrian flow. In addition, we investigate the influence of corridor width and velocity distribution of crowds on unidirectional heterogeneous pedestrian flow. The simulation results reflect that widening corridors could increase the specific flow for the crowd composed of two kinds of pedestrians with significantly different free velocities. Moreover, compared with a unified crowd, the crowd composed of pedestrians with great mobility differences requires a wider corridor to attain the same traffic efficiency. This study could be beneficial in providing a better understanding of heterogeneous pedestrian flow, and quantified outcomes could be applied in traffic facility design.

  8. Ranking the types of intersections for assessing the safety of pedestrians using TOPSIS method

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Călin ŞERBU

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available Every year, more than 1500 accidents with pedestrian occur in the intersections in Romania. The number of accidents involving pedestrians in roundabouts intersections type increased approximately three times in 2013 compared to 2009 in Romania. This alarming increase led to the need of assessing the safety of pedestrians in intersections with or without safety systems. The safety systems for pedestrians and drivers include: the road marking, the pedestrian crossings marking, signal intersections with road signs, traffic lights or pedestrian safety barriers. We propose to assess the types of intersections with TOPSIS method.

  9. Considering built environment and spatial correlation in modelling pedestrian injury severity

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Prato, Carlo G.; Kaplan, Sigal; Patrier, Alexandre

    traffic calming measures, illumination solutions, road maintenance programs and speed limit reductions. Moreover, this study emphasises the role of the built environment, as shopping areas, residential areas, and walking traffic density are positively related to a reduction in pedestrian injury severity......This study looks at mitigating and aggravating factors that are associated with the injury severity of pedestrians when they have crashes with another road user and overcomes existing limitations in the literature by posing attention on the built environment and considering spatial correlation...... of pedestrians to sustain a severe or fatal injury conditional on the occurrence of a crash with another road user. This study confirms previous findings about older pedestrians and intoxicated pedestrians being the most vulnerable road users, and crashes with heavy vehicles and in roads with higher speed limits...

  10. Considering built environment and spatial correlation in modelling pedestrian injury severity

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Prato, Carlo G.; Kaplan, Sigal; Patrier, Alexandre

    2018-01-01

    traffic calming measures, illumination solutions, road maintenance programs and speed limit reductions. Moreover, this study emphasises the role of the built environment, as shopping areas, residential areas, and walking traffic density are positively related to a reduction in pedestrian injury severity......This study looks at mitigating and aggravating factors that are associated with the injury severity of pedestrians when they have crashes with another road user and overcomes existing limitations in the literature by posing attention on the built environment and considering spatial correlation...... of pedestrians to sustain a severe or fatal injury conditional on the occurrence of a crash with another road user. This study confirms previous findings about older pedestrians and intoxicated pedestrians being the most vulnerable road users, and crashes with heavy vehicles and in roads with higher speed limits...

  11. Modeling detour behavior of pedestrian dynamics under different conditions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Qu, Yunchao; Xiao, Yao; Wu, Jianjun; Tang, Tao; Gao, Ziyou

    2018-02-01

    Pedestrian simulation approach has been widely used to reveal the human behavior and evaluate the performance of crowd evacuation. In the existing pedestrian simulation models, the social force model is capable of predicting many collective phenomena. Detour behavior occurs in many cases, and the important behavior is a dominate factor of the crowd evacuation efficiency. However, limited attention has been attracted for analyzing and modeling the characteristics of detour behavior. In this paper, a modified social force model integrated by Voronoi diagram is proposed to calculate the detour direction and preferred velocity. Besides, with the consideration of locations and velocities of neighbor pedestrians, a Logit-based choice model is built to describe the detour direction choice. The proposed model is applied to analyze pedestrian dynamics in a corridor scenario with either unidirectional or bidirectional flow, and a building scenario in real-world. Simulation results show that the modified social force model including detour behavior could reduce the frequency of collision and deadlock, increase the average speed of the crowd, and predict more practical crowd dynamics with detour behavior. This model can also be potentially applied to understand the pedestrian dynamics and design emergent management strategies for crowd evacuations.

  12. The role of fluctuations and interactions in pedestrian dynamics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Corbetta, Alessandro; Meeusen, Jasper; Benzi, Roberto; Lee, Chung-Min; Toschi, Federico

    Understanding quantitatively the statistical behaviour of pedestrians walking in crowds is a major scientific challenge of paramount societal relevance. Walking humans exhibit a rich (stochastic) dynamics whose small and large deviations are driven, among others, by own will as well as by environmental conditions. Via 24/7 automatic pedestrian tracking from multiple overhead Microsoft Kinect depth sensors, we collected large ensembles of pedestrian trajectories (in the order of tens of millions) in different real-life scenarios. These scenarios include both narrow corridors and large urban hallways, enabling us to cover and compare a wide spectrum of typical pedestrian dynamics. We investigate the pedestrian motion measuring the PDFs, e.g. those of position, velocity and acceleration, and at unprecedentedly high statistical resolution. We consider the dependence of PDFs on flow conditions, focusing on diluted dynamics and pair-wise interactions (''collisions'') for mutual avoidance. By means of Langevin-like models we provide models for the measured data, inclusive typical fluctuations and rare events. This work is part of the JSTP research programme ``Vision driven visitor behaviour analysis and crowd management'' with Project Number 341-10-001, which is financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

  13. Pedestrian Walking Behavior Revealed through a Random Walk Model

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hui Xiong

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper applies method of continuous-time random walks for pedestrian flow simulation. In the model, pedestrians can walk forward or backward and turn left or right if there is no block. Velocities of pedestrian flow moving forward or diffusing are dominated by coefficients. The waiting time preceding each jump is assumed to follow an exponential distribution. To solve the model, a second-order two-dimensional partial differential equation, a high-order compact scheme with the alternating direction implicit method, is employed. In the numerical experiments, the walking domain of the first one is two-dimensional with two entrances and one exit, and that of the second one is two-dimensional with one entrance and one exit. The flows in both scenarios are one way. Numerical results show that the model can be used for pedestrian flow simulation.

  14. Greenways Pedestrian & Cyclist Counters

    Data.gov (United States)

    Town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina — Pedestrian and cyclist sensor data time stamped from sensors on the Bolin Creek Trail and Meadowmont Trail in Chapel Hill. Each sensor has four value points that...

  15. Effects of mobile Internet use on college student pedestrian injury risk.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Byington, Katherine W; Schwebel, David C

    2013-03-01

    College-age individuals have the highest incidence of pedestrian injuries of any age cohort. One factor that might contribute to elevated pedestrian injuries among this age group is injuries incurred while crossing streets distracted by mobile devices. Examine whether young adult pedestrian safety is compromised while crossing a virtual pedestrian street while distracted using the Internet on a mobile "smartphone." A within-subjects design was implemented with 92 young adults. Participants crossed a virtual pedestrian street 20 times, half the time while undistracted and half while completing an email-driven "scavenger hunt" to answer mundane questions using mobile Internet on their cell phones. Six measures of pedestrian behavior were assessed during crossings. Participants also reported typical patterns of street crossing and mobile Internet use. Participants reported using mobile Internet with great frequency in daily life, including while walking across streets. In the virtual street environment, pedestrian behavior was greatly altered and generally more risky when participants were distracted by Internet use. While distracted, participants waited longer to cross the street (F=42.37), missed more safe opportunities to cross (F=42.63), took longer to initiate crossing when a safe gap was available (F=53.03), looked left and right less often (F=124.68), spent more time looking away from the road (F=1959.78), and were more likely to be hit or almost hit by an oncoming vehicle (F=29.54; all psmobile Internet experience. Pedestrian behavior was influenced, and generally considerably riskier, when participants were simultaneously using mobile Internet and crossing the street than when crossing the street with no distraction. This finding reinforces the need for increased awareness concerning the risks of distracted pedestrian behavior. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  16. Pedestrian Counting with Occlusion Handling Using Stereo Thermal Cameras

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kristoffersen, Miklas Strøm; Dueholm, Jacob Velling; Gade, Rikke

    2016-01-01

    and the complexity of scenes with many people occluding one another. To address these challenges, this paper introduces the use of a stereo thermal camera setup for pedestrian counting. We investigate the reconstruction of 3D points in a pedestrian street with two thermal cameras and propose an algorithm......The number of pedestrians walking the streets or gathered in public spaces is a valuable piece of information for shop owners, city governments, event organizers and many others. However, automatic counting that takes place day and night is challenging due to changing lighting conditions...

  17. Exploring physical attributes of walkability from perspective of blind pedestrians

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bona Frazila Russ

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Access has become a crucial issue for the persons with disabilities (PWDs, in which the inconvenient transportation facilities is contributed to the dependent living issue of PWD, specifically the visual impaired person. As a primary aspect of transportation, the walking facilities further needs to be carefully considered for facilitating their moving activities. Recently, the effect of built environment on walking behavior has obtained significant attention, which is generally constructed within the framework of walkability concept. The walkability has been extensively used for evaluating the physical attributes of pedestrian facilities by comparing it to the walker perception. Hence, the evaluation result can directly answer the needs of pedestrian. Despite of their recent research achievements, the walkability concept is mostly unsuccessful to take into account the blind walker characteristics. This paper then explore physical attributes of walkability environment in order to provide the friendly pedestrian facilities for the blind pedestrian, which is rarely explored. The research is established based on the blind walker perspectives within the micro-level analysis that incorporates a smaller unit of measurement (i.e., the street-level physical attributes. The physical attributes result are thus potentially to be utilized for analyzing the required pedestrian facilities for the blind pedestrians.

  18. Considering built environment and spatial correlation in modeling pedestrian injury severity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Prato, Carlo G; Kaplan, Sigal; Patrier, Alexandre; Rasmussen, Thomas K

    2018-01-02

    This study looks at mitigating and aggravating factors that are associated with the injury severity of pedestrians when they have crashes with another road user and overcomes existing limitations in the literature by focusing attention on the built environment and considering spatial correlation across crashes. Reports for 6,539 pedestrian crashes occurred in Denmark between 2006 and 2015 were merged with geographic information system resources containing detailed information about the built environment and exposure at the crash locations. A linearized spatial logit model estimated the probability of pedestrians sustaining a severe or fatal injury conditional on the occurrence of a crash with another road user. This study confirms previous findings about older pedestrians and intoxicated pedestrians being the most vulnerable road users and crashes with heavy vehicles and in roads with higher speed limits being related to the most severe outcomes. This study provides novel perspectives by showing positive spatial correlations of crashes with the same severity outcomes and emphasizing the role of the built environment in the proximity of the crash. This study emphasizes the need for thinking about traffic calming measures, illumination solutions, road maintenance programs, and speed limit reductions. Moreover, this study emphasizes the role of the built environment, because shopping areas, residential areas, and walking traffic density are positively related to a reduction in pedestrian injury severity. Often, these areas have in common a larger pedestrian mass that is more likely to make other road users more aware and attentive, whereas the same does not seem to apply to areas with lower pedestrian density.

  19. Enhancing the Driver Awareness of Pedestrian using Augmented Reality Cues

    OpenAIRE

    Phan , Minh Tien; Thouvenin , Indira; Frémont , Vincent

    2016-01-01

    International audience; Pedestrian accident is a serious problem for the society. Pedestrian Collision Warning Systems (PCWS) are proposed to detect the presence of pedestrians and to warn the driver about the potential dangers. However, their interfaces associated with ambiguous alerts can distract drivers and create more dangers. On the other hand, Augmented Reality (AR) with Head-Up Display (HUD) interfaces have recently attracted the attention in the field of automotive research as they c...

  20. Training Children in Pedestrian Safety: Distinguishing Gains in Knowledge from Gains in Safe Behavior

    OpenAIRE

    Schwebel, David C.; McClure, Leslie A.

    2014-01-01

    Pedestrian injuries contribute greatly to child morbidity and mortality. Recent evidence suggests that training within virtual pedestrian environments may improve children’s street crossing skills, but may not convey knowledge about safety in street environments. We hypothesized that (a) children will gain pedestrian safety knowledge via videos/software/internet websites, but not when trained by virtual pedestrian environment or other strategies; (b) pedestrian safety knowledge will be associ...

  1. Effects of Switching Behavior for the Attraction on Pedestrian Dynamics.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jaeyoung Kwak

    Full Text Available Walking is a fundamental activity of our daily life not only for moving to other places but also for interacting with surrounding environment. While walking on the streets, pedestrians can be aware of attractions like shopping windows. They can be influenced by the attractions and some of them might shift their attention towards the attractions, namely switching behavior. As a first step to incorporate the switching behavior, this study investigates collective effects of switching behavior for an attraction by developing a behavioral model. Numerical simulations exhibit different patterns of pedestrian behavior depending on the strength of the social influence and the average length of stay. When the social influence is strong along with a long length of stay, a saturated phase can be defined at which all the pedestrians have visited the attraction. If the social influence is not strong enough, an unsaturated phase appears where one can observe that some pedestrians head for the attraction while others walk in their desired direction. These collective patterns of pedestrian behavior are summarized in a phase diagram by comparing the number of pedestrians who visited the attraction to the number of passersby near the attraction. Measuring the marginal benefits with respect to the strength of the social influence and the average length of stay enables us to identify under what conditions enhancing these variables would be more effective. The findings from this study can be understood in the context of the pedestrian facility management, for instance, for retail stores.

  2. Dynamic analysis of pedestrian crossing behaviors on traffic flow at unsignalized mid-block crosswalks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Gang; He, Jing; Luo, Zhiyong; Yang, Wunian; Zhang, Xiping

    2015-05-01

    It is important to study the effects of pedestrian crossing behaviors on traffic flow for solving the urban traffic jam problem. Based on the Nagel-Schreckenberg (NaSch) traffic cellular automata (TCA) model, a new one-dimensional TCA model is proposed considering the uncertainty conflict behaviors between pedestrians and vehicles at unsignalized mid-block crosswalks and defining the parallel updating rules of motion states of pedestrians and vehicles. The traffic flow is simulated for different vehicle densities and behavior trigger probabilities. The fundamental diagrams show that no matter what the values of vehicle braking probability, pedestrian acceleration crossing probability, pedestrian backing probability and pedestrian generation probability, the system flow shows the "increasing-saturating-decreasing" trend with the increase of vehicle density; when the vehicle braking probability is lower, it is easy to cause an emergency brake of vehicle and result in great fluctuation of saturated flow; the saturated flow decreases slightly with the increase of the pedestrian acceleration crossing probability; when the pedestrian backing probability lies between 0.4 and 0.6, the saturated flow is unstable, which shows the hesitant behavior of pedestrians when making the decision of backing; the maximum flow is sensitive to the pedestrian generation probability and rapidly decreases with increasing the pedestrian generation probability, the maximum flow is approximately equal to zero when the probability is more than 0.5. The simulations prove that the influence of frequent crossing behavior upon vehicle flow is immense; the vehicle flow decreases and gets into serious congestion state rapidly with the increase of the pedestrian generation probability.

  3. Traffic instabilities in self-organized pedestrian crowds.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mehdi Moussaïd

    Full Text Available In human crowds as well as in many animal societies, local interactions among individuals often give rise to self-organized collective organizations that offer functional benefits to the group. For instance, flows of pedestrians moving in opposite directions spontaneously segregate into lanes of uniform walking directions. This phenomenon is often referred to as a smart collective pattern, as it increases the traffic efficiency with no need of external control. However, the functional benefits of this emergent organization have never been experimentally measured, and the underlying behavioral mechanisms are poorly understood. In this work, we have studied this phenomenon under controlled laboratory conditions. We found that the traffic segregation exhibits structural instabilities characterized by the alternation of organized and disorganized states, where the lifetime of well-organized clusters of pedestrians follow a stretched exponential relaxation process. Further analysis show that the inter-pedestrian variability of comfortable walking speeds is a key variable at the origin of the observed traffic perturbations. We show that the collective benefit of the emerging pattern is maximized when all pedestrians walk at the average speed of the group. In practice, however, local interactions between slow- and fast-walking pedestrians trigger global breakdowns of organization, which reduce the collective and the individual payoff provided by the traffic segregation. This work is a step ahead toward the understanding of traffic self-organization in crowds, which turns out to be modulated by complex behavioral mechanisms that do not always maximize the group's benefits. The quantitative understanding of crowd behaviors opens the way for designing bottom-up management strategies bound to promote the emergence of efficient collective behaviors in crowds.

  4. Pedestrian-induced lateral forces on footbridges

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ingolfsson, Einar Thor; Georgakis, Christos T.; Jönsson, Jeppe

    2012-01-01

    of the underlying pavement. An extensive experimental analysis has been carried out to determine the lateral forces generated by pedestrians when walking on a laterally moving treadmill. Two different conditions are investigated; initially the treadmill is fixed and then it is laterally driven in a sinusoidal...... motion at varying combinations of frequencies (0.33-1.07 Hz) and amplitudes (4.5-48 mm). The component of the pedestrian-induced force which is caused by the laterally moving surface is herewith quantified through equivalent velocity and acceleration proportional coefficients. It is shown that large...

  5. Pedestrian-induced lateral forces on footbridges

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ingólfsson, Einar Thór; Georgakis, Christos T.; Jönsson, Jeppe

    2011-01-01

    of the underlying pavement. An extensive experimental analysis has been carried out to determine the lateral forces generated by pedestrians when walking on a laterally moving treadmill. Two different conditions are investigated; initially the treadmill is fixed and then it is laterally driven in a sinusoidal...... motion at varying combinations of frequencies (0.33-1.07 Hz) and amplitudes (4.5-48 mm). The component of the pedestrian-induced force which is caused by the laterally moving surface is herewith quantified through equivalent velocity and acceleration proportional coefficients. It is shown that large...

  6. Fast Pedestrian Recognition Based on Multisensor Fusion

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hongyu Hu

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available A fast pedestrian recognition algorithm based on multisensor fusion is presented in this paper. Firstly, potential pedestrian locations are estimated by laser radar scanning in the world coordinates, and then their corresponding candidate regions in the image are located by camera calibration and the perspective mapping model. For avoiding time consuming in the training and recognition process caused by large numbers of feature vector dimensions, region of interest-based integral histograms of oriented gradients (ROI-IHOG feature extraction method is proposed later. A support vector machine (SVM classifier is trained by a novel pedestrian sample dataset which adapt to the urban road environment for online recognition. Finally, we test the validity of the proposed approach with several video sequences from realistic urban road scenarios. Reliable and timewise performances are shown based on our multisensor fusing method.

  7. Situational Factors of Influencing Drivers to Give Precedence to Jaywalking Pedestrians at Signalized Crosswalk

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xiaobei Jiang

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available A large number of fatalities are caused by the vehicle-pedestrian accidents. Under a potential conflict between the vehicle and jaywalking pedestrian, giving precedence to the pedestrian will be a proper decision taken by the driver to avoid collision. Field traffic data has been collected by video recording and image processing at two signalized crosswalks. Vehicle speed performance in the single vehicle-pedestrian encounter and platoon vehicle-pedestrian encounter were analyzed for understanding the driver behavior in the conflict process. Binary logic model was proposed to estimate the drivers' giving precedence influenced by the situational factors and the model was validated to predict the drivers' choices accurately. The vehicle speed, pedestrian speed, pedestrian lateral distance and the vehicle longitudinal distance to the conflict point were proved to affect the drivers' choices in platoon driving. The research results would hopefully be helpful to the design of intelligent vehicles and pedestrian protection systems by the knowledge-based decision making process.

  8. AUTOMATIC PEDESTRIAN CROSSING DETECTION AND IMPAIRMENT ANALYSIS BASED ON MOBILE MAPPING SYSTEM

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    X. Liu

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available Pedestrian crossing, as an important part of transportation infrastructures, serves to secure pedestrians’ lives and possessions and keep traffic flow in order. As a prominent feature in the street scene, detection of pedestrian crossing contributes to 3D road marking reconstruction and diminishing the adverse impact of outliers in 3D street scene reconstruction. Since pedestrian crossing is subject to wearing and tearing from heavy traffic flow, it is of great imperative to monitor its status quo. On this account, an approach of automatic pedestrian crossing detection using images from vehicle-based Mobile Mapping System is put forward and its defilement and impairment are analyzed in this paper. Firstly, pedestrian crossing classifier is trained with low recall rate. Then initial detections are refined by utilizing projection filtering, contour information analysis, and monocular vision. Finally, a pedestrian crossing detection and analysis system with high recall rate, precision and robustness will be achieved. This system works for pedestrian crossing detection under different situations and light conditions. It can recognize defiled and impaired crossings automatically in the meanwhile, which facilitates monitoring and maintenance of traffic facilities, so as to reduce potential traffic safety problems and secure lives and property.

  9. Small-size pedestrian detection in large scene based on fast R-CNN

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Shengke; Yang, Na; Duan, Lianghua; Liu, Lu; Dong, Junyu

    2018-04-01

    Pedestrian detection is a canonical sub-problem of object detection with high demand during recent years. Although recent deep learning object detectors such as Fast/Faster R-CNN have shown excellent performance for general object detection, they have limited success for small size pedestrian detection in large-view scene. We study that the insufficient resolution of feature maps lead to the unsatisfactory accuracy when handling small instances. In this paper, we investigate issues involving Fast R-CNN for pedestrian detection. Driven by the observations, we propose a very simple but effective baseline for pedestrian detection based on Fast R-CNN, employing the DPM detector to generate proposals for accuracy, and training a fast R-CNN style network to jointly optimize small size pedestrian detection with skip connection concatenating feature from different layers to solving coarseness of feature maps. And the accuracy is improved in our research for small size pedestrian detection in the real large scene.

  10. Temporal and Fine-Grained Pedestrian Action Recognition on Driving Recorder Database.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kataoka, Hirokatsu; Satoh, Yutaka; Aoki, Yoshimitsu; Oikawa, Shoko; Matsui, Yasuhiro

    2018-02-20

    The paper presents an emerging issue of fine-grained pedestrian action recognition that induces an advanced pre-crush safety to estimate a pedestrian intention in advance. The fine-grained pedestrian actions include visually slight differences (e.g., walking straight and crossing), which are difficult to distinguish from each other. It is believed that the fine-grained action recognition induces a pedestrian intention estimation for a helpful advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). The following difficulties have been studied to achieve a fine-grained and accurate pedestrian action recognition: (i) In order to analyze the fine-grained motion of a pedestrian appearance in the vehicle-mounted drive recorder, a method to describe subtle change of motion characteristics occurring in a short time is necessary; (ii) even when the background moves greatly due to the driving of the vehicle, it is necessary to detect changes in subtle motion of the pedestrian; (iii) the collection of large-scale fine-grained actions is very difficult, and therefore a relatively small database should be focused. We find out how to learn an effective recognition model with only a small-scale database. Here, we have thoroughly evaluated several types of configurations to explore an effective approach in fine-grained pedestrian action recognition without a large-scale database. Moreover, two different datasets have been collected in order to raise the issue. Finally, our proposal attained 91.01% on National Traffic Science and Environment Laboratory database (NTSEL) and 53.23% on the near-miss driving recorder database (NDRDB). The paper has improved +8.28% and +6.53% from baseline two-stream fusion convnets.

  11. Temporal and Fine-Grained Pedestrian Action Recognition on Driving Recorder Database

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hirokatsu Kataoka

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available The paper presents an emerging issue of fine-grained pedestrian action recognition that induces an advanced pre-crush safety to estimate a pedestrian intention in advance. The fine-grained pedestrian actions include visually slight differences (e.g., walking straight and crossing, which are difficult to distinguish from each other. It is believed that the fine-grained action recognition induces a pedestrian intention estimation for a helpful advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS. The following difficulties have been studied to achieve a fine-grained and accurate pedestrian action recognition: (i In order to analyze the fine-grained motion of a pedestrian appearance in the vehicle-mounted drive recorder, a method to describe subtle change of motion characteristics occurring in a short time is necessary; (ii even when the background moves greatly due to the driving of the vehicle, it is necessary to detect changes in subtle motion of the pedestrian; (iii the collection of large-scale fine-grained actions is very difficult, and therefore a relatively small database should be focused. We find out how to learn an effective recognition model with only a small-scale database. Here, we have thoroughly evaluated several types of configurations to explore an effective approach in fine-grained pedestrian action recognition without a large-scale database. Moreover, two different datasets have been collected in order to raise the issue. Finally, our proposal attained 91.01% on National Traffic Science and Environment Laboratory database (NTSEL and 53.23% on the near-miss driving recorder database (NDRDB. The paper has improved +8.28% and +6.53% from baseline two-stream fusion convnets.

  12. Features of microscopic pedestrian movement in a panic situation based on cellular automata model

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ibrahim, Najihah; Hassan, Fadratul Hafinaz

    2017-10-01

    Pedestrian movement is the one of the subset for the crowd management under simulation objective. During panic situation, pedestrian usually will create a microscopic movement that lead towards the self-organization. During self-organizing, the behavioral and physical factors had caused the mass effect on the pedestrian movement. The basic CA model will create a movement path for each pedestrian over a time step. However, due to the factors immerge, the CA model needs some enhancement that will establish a real simulation state. Hence, this concept paper will discuss on the enhanced features of CA model for microscopic pedestrian movement during panic situation for a better pedestrian simulation.

  13. Enlightenment of Qilou Street Space Intelligence to Pedestrian System Design in Commercial District

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chen Jing

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Aiming at those generally existing problems in urban commercial pedestrian districts, through the design methods of extracting separation of man from vehicle in traditional Qilou pedestrian street space, continuous pedestrian space with shelter, and the behavior paths with combination of commercial activities, this thesis sets about from the behaviors of pedestrians in walking state, and finds that the traditional Qilou pedestrian street space can satisfy pedestrians’ physiological and psychological demands in shopping better. At the same time, combining current urban commercial districts developing demands, and the successful experience from traditional Qilou, this thesis also proposes relevant improvement measures. The improvements in design means are expected to improve pedestrian environment for, and achieve the commercial values of these districts, as well as the win-win of environment improvement and commercial activity development.

  14. Epidemiology of pedestrian-MVCs by road type in Cluj, Romania.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hamann, Cara; Peek-Asa, Corinne; Rus, Diana

    2015-04-01

    Pedestrian-motor vehicle (PMV) crash rates in Romania are among the highest in all of Europe. The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of pedestrian-MVCs in Cluj County, Romania, on the two major types of roadways: national or local. Cluj County police crash report data from 2010 were used to identify pedestrian, driver and crash characteristics of pedestrian-MVCs. Crashes with available location data were geocoded and road type (national or local) for each crash was determined. Distributions of crash characteristics were examined by road type and multivariable logistic regression models were built to determine predictors of crash road type. Crashes occurring on national roads involved more teenagers and adults, while those on local roads involved more young children (0-12) and older adults (65+) (pRomania. Results from this study suggest that factors leading to PMV crashes on national roads are more likely to involve driver-related causes compared with local roads. Intervention priorities to reduce pedestrian crashes on national roads should be directed towards driver behaviour on national roads. Further examination of driver and pedestrian behaviours related to crash risk on both national and local roads, such as distraction and speeding, is warranted. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

  15. Qualitative comparison of north-american procedures for areawide pedestrian travel measurement

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ryan Greene-Roesel

    2009-10-01

    Full Text Available

    There is no standard system for estimating area-wide pedestrian volumes in the United States. As a result, pedestrian volumes cannot be routinely used to guide transportation investments and monitoring measures performance. Vehicle volumes, by contrast, are measured systematically in each state and are reported to the Federal Highway Administration annually to be used in the allocation of federal funds. This paper investigates the advantages and disadvantages of three approaches to the creation of a standard system of pedestrian volume measurement: direct sampling, survey methods, and modeling. Examples of each method are given, and the potential of each to become a national standard is discussed. Of the three approaches, the modeling methods were judged to be most suitable for tracking pedestrian volumes at the national, state, and sub-state level. A standardized pedestrian volume modeling method could make use of existing data sources without generating the need for a new national pedestrian data collection effort.

  16. A Case Study on the Walking Speed of Pedestrian at the Bus Terminal Area

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mohamad Ali Mohd Firdaus

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Walking speed is one of the factors in understanding the pedestrian walking behaviours. Every pedestrian has different level of walking speed that are regulated by some factors such as gender and age. This study was conducted at a bus terminal area with two objectives in which the first one was to determine the average walking speed of pedestrian by considering the factors of age, gender, people with and without carrying baggage; and the second one was to make a comparison of the average walking speed that considered age as the factor of comparison between pedestrian at the bus terminal area and crosswalk. Demographic factor of pedestrian walking speed in this study are gender and age consist of male, female, and 7 groups of age categories that are children, adult men and women, senior adult men and women, over 70 and disabled person. Data of experiment was obtained by making a video recording of the movement of people that were walking and roaming around at the main lobby for 45 minutes by using a camcorder. Hence, data analysis was done by using software named Human Behaviour Simulator (HBS for analysing the data extracted from the video. The result of this study was male pedestrian walked faster than female with the average of walking speed 1.13m/s and 1.07m/s respectively. Averagely, pedestrian that walked without carrying baggage had higher walking speed compared to pedestrian that were carrying baggage with the speed of 1.02m/s and 0.70m/s respectively. Male pedestrian walks faster than female because they have higher level of stamina and they are mostly taller than female pedestrian. Furthermore, pedestrian with baggage walks slower because baggage will cause distractions such as pedestrian will have more weight to carry and people tend to walk slower.

  17. A Case Study on the Walking Speed of Pedestrian at the Bus Terminal Area

    Science.gov (United States)

    Firdaus Mohamad Ali, Mohd; Salleh Abustan, Muhamad; Hidayah Abu Talib, Siti; Abustan, Ismail; Rahman, Noorhazlinda Abd; Gotoh, Hitoshi

    2018-03-01

    Walking speed is one of the factors in understanding the pedestrian walking behaviours. Every pedestrian has different level of walking speed that are regulated by some factors such as gender and age. This study was conducted at a bus terminal area with two objectives in which the first one was to determine the average walking speed of pedestrian by considering the factors of age, gender, people with and without carrying baggage; and the second one was to make a comparison of the average walking speed that considered age as the factor of comparison between pedestrian at the bus terminal area and crosswalk. Demographic factor of pedestrian walking speed in this study are gender and age consist of male, female, and 7 groups of age categories that are children, adult men and women, senior adult men and women, over 70 and disabled person. Data of experiment was obtained by making a video recording of the movement of people that were walking and roaming around at the main lobby for 45 minutes by using a camcorder. Hence, data analysis was done by using software named Human Behaviour Simulator (HBS) for analysing the data extracted from the video. The result of this study was male pedestrian walked faster than female with the average of walking speed 1.13m/s and 1.07m/s respectively. Averagely, pedestrian that walked without carrying baggage had higher walking speed compared to pedestrian that were carrying baggage with the speed of 1.02m/s and 0.70m/s respectively. Male pedestrian walks faster than female because they have higher level of stamina and they are mostly taller than female pedestrian. Furthermore, pedestrian with baggage walks slower because baggage will cause distractions such as pedestrian will have more weight to carry and people tend to walk slower.

  18. Simulation of Pedestrian Behavior in the Collision-Avoidance Process considering Their Moving Preferences

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhilu Yuan

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Walking habits can affect the self-organizing movement in pedestrian flow. In China, pedestrians prefer to walk along the right-hand side in the collision-avoidance process, and the same is true for the left-hand preference that is followed in several countries. Through experiments with pedestrian flow, we find that the relative position between pedestrians can affect their moving preferences. We propose a kind of collision-avoidance force based on the social force model, which considers the predictions of potential conflict and the relative position between pedestrians. In the simulation, we use the improved model to explore the effect of moving preference on the collision-avoidance process and self-organizing pedestrian movement. We conclude that the improved model can bring the simulation closer to reality and that moving preference is conducive to the self-adjustment of counterflow.

  19. Pedestrian crossing behavior, an observational study in the city of Ushuaia, Argentina.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Poó, Fernando Martín; Ledesma, Ruben Daniel; Trujillo, Roberto

    2018-04-03

    Pedestrian crashes are a critical problem in Latin American countries. However, little research has been published about pedestrians and even less about their behaviors in a naturalistic context. The objective of the present research was to explore risky pedestrian crossing behaviors in traffic intersections in an argentine city (Ushuaia). It is focused in different stages of the crossing process, traffic code violations, and other potentially risky behaviors such as distractions. A high frequency of risky behaviors among pedestrians was expected. Moreover, according to previous findings, it was hypothesized that men and younger pedestrians would show riskier behaviors. Participants were 802 pedestrians (53.9% females) observed at several intersections (with and without traffic lights) in the city of Ushuaia. Behaviors were codified following a standardized observation protocol. Observers documented information on behavior previous to, during, and after crossing. Gender and age were also registered. Data were gathered through video recording. Frequency analyses of observed behaviors were conducted for the total sample, as well as by gender and by age group. A general crossing risk index was calculated to facilitate comparisons between the genders and age groups. We conducted an analysis of variance to evaluate gender and age differences for this index. A high proportion of risky behaviors were observed among pedestrians. The majority of pedestrian waited in the street (as opposed to on the sidewalk) before crossing, did not comply with traffic lights, or crossed outside the crosswalk. A large number of pedestrians were distracted while crossing. Men presented higher scores on risky behaviors than women. No differences were observed by age group. The high level of risk behaviors during the different stages of street crossing is worrisome and reinforces the idea that pedestrians are responsible for many of the conflicts with motorists. Many of the risky behaviors

  20. From Ant Trails to Pedestrian Dynamics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andreas Schadschneider

    2003-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents a model for the simulation of pedestrian dynamics inspired by the behaviour of ants in ant trails. Ants communicate by producing a pheromone that can be smelled by other ants. In this model, pedestrians produce a virtual pheromone that influences the motion of others. In this way all interactions are strictly local, and so even large crowds can be simulated very efficiently. Nevertheless, the model is able to reproduce the collective effects observed empirically, eg the formation of lanes in counterflow. As an application, we reproduce a surprising result found in experiments of evacuation from an aircraft.

  1. Distributed Pedestrian Detection Alerts Based on Data Fusion with Accurate Localization

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Arturo de la Escalera

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available Among Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS pedestrian detection is a common issue due to the vulnerability of pedestrians in the event of accidents. In the present work, a novel approach for pedestrian detection based on data fusion is presented. Data fusion helps to overcome the limitations inherent to each detection system (computer vision and laser scanner and provides accurate and trustable tracking of any pedestrian movement. The application is complemented by an efficient communication protocol, able to alert vehicles in the surroundings by a fast and reliable communication. The combination of a powerful location, based on a GPS with inertial measurement, and accurate obstacle localization based on data fusion has allowed locating the detected pedestrians with high accuracy. Tests proved the viability of the detection system and the efficiency of the communication, even at long distances. By the use of the alert communication, dangerous situations such as occlusions or misdetections can be avoided.

  2. Distributed pedestrian detection alerts based on data fusion with accurate localization.

    Science.gov (United States)

    García, Fernando; Jiménez, Felipe; Anaya, José Javier; Armingol, José María; Naranjo, José Eugenio; de la Escalera, Arturo

    2013-09-04

    Among Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) pedestrian detection is a common issue due to the vulnerability of pedestrians in the event of accidents. In the present work, a novel approach for pedestrian detection based on data fusion is presented. Data fusion helps to overcome the limitations inherent to each detection system (computer vision and laser scanner) and provides accurate and trustable tracking of any pedestrian movement. The application is complemented by an efficient communication protocol, able to alert vehicles in the surroundings by a fast and reliable communication. The combination of a powerful location, based on a GPS with inertial measurement, and accurate obstacle localization based on data fusion has allowed locating the detected pedestrians with high accuracy. Tests proved the viability of the detection system and the efficiency of the communication, even at long distances. By the use of the alert communication, dangerous situations such as occlusions or misdetections can be avoided.

  3. Investigating and improving pedestrian safety in an urban environment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pollack, Keshia M; Gielen, Andrea C; Mohd Ismail, Mohd Nasir; Mitzner, Molly; Wu, Michael; Links, Jonathan M

    2014-12-01

    Prompted by a series of fatal and nonfatal pedestrian-vehicle collisions, university leadership from one urban institution collaborated with its academic injury research center to investigate traffic-related hazards facing pedestrians. This descriptive epidemiologic study used multiple data collection strategies to determine the burden of pedestrian injury in the target area. Data were collected in 2011 through a review of university crash reports from campus police; a systematic environmental audit and direct observations using a validated instrument and trained raters; and focus groups with faculty, students, and staff. Study findings were synthesized and evidence-informed recommendations were developed and disseminated to university leadership. Crash reports provided some indication of the risks on the streets adjacent to the campus. The environmental audit identified a lack of signage posting the speed limit, faded crosswalks, issues with traffic light and walk sign synchronization, and limited formal pedestrian crossings, which led to jaywalking. Focus groups participants described dangerous locations and times, signal controls and signage, enforcement of traffic laws, use of cell phones and iPods, and awareness of pedestrian safety. Recommendations to improve pedestrian safety were developed in accordance with the three E's of injury prevention (education, enforcement, and engineering), and along with plans for implementation and evaluation, were presented to university leadership. These results underscore the importance of using multiple methods to understand fully the problem, developing pragmatic recommendations that align with the three E's of injury prevention, and collaborating with leadership who have the authority to implement recommended injury countermeasures. These lessons are relevant for the many colleges and universities in urban settings where a majority of travel to offices, classrooms, and surrounding amenities are by foot.

  4. Powered two-wheeler drivers' risk of hitting a pedestrian in towns.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Clabaux, Nicolas; Fournier, Jean-Yves; Michel, Jean-Emmanuel

    2014-12-01

    The risk of collision between pedestrians and powered two-wheelers is poorly understood today. The objective of this research is to determine the risk for powered two-wheeler drivers of hitting and injuring a pedestrian per kilometer driven in towns and to compare this risk with that run by four-wheeled vehicle drivers. Using the bodily injury accidents recorded by the police on nine roads in the city of Marseille in 2011 and a campaign of observations of powered two-wheeler traffic, we estimated the risk per kilometer driven by powered two-wheeler drivers of hitting a pedestrian and compared it with the risk run by four-wheeled vehicle drivers. The results show that the risk for powered two-wheeler drivers of hitting and injuring a pedestrian is significantly higher than the risk run by four-wheeled vehicle drivers. On the nine roads studied, it is on average 3.33 times higher (95% CI: 1.63; 6.78). Taking four more years into account made it possible to consolidate these results and to tighten the confidence interval. There does indeed seem to be problems in the interactions between pedestrians and powered two-wheeler users in urban traffic. These interaction problems lead to a higher risk of hitting and injuring a pedestrian for powered two-wheeler drivers than for four-wheeled vehicle drivers. The analysis of the police reports suggests that part of this increased risk comes from filtering maneuvers by powered two-wheelers. Possible countermeasures deal with the urban street layout. Measures consisting in reducing the width and the number of traffic lanes to a strict minimum and installing medians or pedestrian islands could be an effective way for the prevention of urban accidents between pedestrians and powered two-wheelers. Copyright © 2014 National Safety Council and Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  5. The risk of pedestrian collisions with peripheral visual field loss.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Peli, Eli; Apfelbaum, Henry; Berson, Eliot L; Goldstein, Robert B

    2016-12-01

    Patients with peripheral field loss complain of colliding with other pedestrians in open-space environments such as shopping malls. Field expansion devices (e.g., prisms) can create artificial peripheral islands of vision. We investigated the visual angle at which these islands can be most effective for avoiding pedestrian collisions, by modeling the collision risk density as a function of bearing angle of pedestrians relative to the patient. Pedestrians at all possible locations were assumed to be moving in all directions with equal probability within a reasonable range of walking speeds. The risk density was found to be highly anisotropic. It peaked at ≈45° eccentricity. Increasing pedestrian speed range shifted the risk to higher eccentricities. The risk density is independent of time to collision. The model results were compared to the binocular residual peripheral island locations of 42 patients with forms of retinitis pigmentosa. The natural residual island prevalence also peaked nasally at about 45° but temporally at about 75°. This asymmetry resulted in a complementary coverage of the binocular field of view. Natural residual binocular island eccentricities seem well matched to the collision-risk density function, optimizing detection of other walking pedestrians (nasally) and of faster hazards (temporally). Field expansion prism devices will be most effective if they can create artificial peripheral islands at about 45° eccentricities. The collision risk and residual island findings raise interesting questions about normal visual development.

  6. Validity of instruments to assess students' travel and pedestrian safety

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Baranowski Tom

    2010-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Safe Routes to School (SRTS programs are designed to make walking and bicycling to school safe and accessible for children. Despite their growing popularity, few validated measures exist for assessing important outcomes such as type of student transport or pedestrian safety behaviors. This research validated the SRTS school travel survey and a pedestrian safety behavior checklist. Methods Fourth grade students completed a brief written survey on how they got to school that day with set responses. Test-retest reliability was obtained 3-4 hours apart. Convergent validity of the SRTS travel survey was assessed by comparison to parents' report. For the measure of pedestrian safety behavior, 10 research assistants observed 29 students at a school intersection for completion of 8 selected pedestrian safety behaviors. Reliability was determined in two ways: correlations between the research assistants' ratings to that of the Principal Investigator (PI and intraclass correlations (ICC across research assistant ratings. Results The SRTS travel survey had high test-retest reliability (κ = 0.97, n = 96, p Conclusions These validated instruments can be used to assess SRTS programs. The pedestrian safety behavior checklist may benefit from further formative work.

  7. Distracted walking: Examining the extent to pedestrian safety problems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Judith Mwakalonge

    2015-10-01

    Full Text Available Pedestrians, much like drivers, have always been engaged in multi-tasking like using hand-held devices, listening to music, snacking, or reading while walking. The effects are similar to those experienced by distracted drivers. However, distracted walking has not received similar policies and effective interventions as distracted driving to improve pedestrian safety. This study reviewed the state-of-practice on policies, campaigns, available data, identified research needs, and opportunities pertaining to distracted walking. A comprehensive review of literature revealed that some of the agencies/organizations disseminate useful information about certain distracting activities that pedestrians should avoid while walking to improve their safety. Various walking safety rules/tips have been given, such as not wearing headphones or talking on a cell phone while crossing a street, keeping the volume down, hanging up the phone while walking, being aware of traffic, and avoiding distractions like walking with texting. The majority of the past observational-based and experimental-based studies reviewed in this study on distracted walking is in agreement that there is a positive correlation between distraction and unsafe walking behavior. However, limitations of the existing crash data suggest that distracted walking may not be a severe threat to the public health. Current pedestrian crash data provide insufficient information for researchers to examine the extent to which distracted walking causes and/or contributes to actual pedestrian safety problems.

  8. The roles of gender, age and cognitive development in children's pedestrian route selection.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barton, B K; Ulrich, T; Lyday, B

    2012-03-01

    Thousands of American children under the age of 10 years are injured annually as pedestrians. Despite the scope of this public health problem, knowledge about behavioural control and developmental factors involved in the aetiology of child pedestrian safety is limited. The present study examined the roles of gender, age and two aspects of cognitive development (visual search and efficiency of processing) in children's safe pedestrian route selection. Measures of cognitive functioning (visual search and efficiency) and selections of risky pedestrian routes were collected from 65 children aged 5-9 years. Boys, younger children and those with less developed cognitive functioning selected riskier pedestrian routes. Cognitive functioning also subsumed age as a predictor of risky route selections. Our findings suggest developmental differences, specifically less developed cognitive functioning, play important roles in children's pedestrian decision making. Directions for future examination are discussed. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

  9. Child pedestrian safety knowledge, behaviour and road injury in Cape Town, South Africa.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Koekemoer, Karin; Van Gesselleen, Megan; Van Niekerk, Ashley; Govender, Rajen; Van As, Arjan Bastiaan

    2017-02-01

    Pedestrian injuries are a leading cause of death among South African children, and young children residing in low-income communities are more at risk, due to various factors such as inadequate road infrastructure, exposure to traffic due to reliance on walking as a means of transport, and lack of supervision. This study used a cross-sectional, non-randomized self-report survey to assess pedestrian safety knowledge, road-crossing behaviour and pedestrian injuries of primary school children in selected low-income settings in Cape Town. The survey focused on three primary schools that had joined the Safe Kids Worldwide Model School Zone Project and was administered to 536 children aged 6-15 years, in their home language of isiXhosa. Descriptive and bivariate analyses as well as multivariate regression analyses were conducted to investigate potential predictor variables for pedestrian collision severity and unsafe road-crossing behaviour. Walking was the sole form of travel for 81% of the children, with a large proportion regularly walking unsupervised. Children who walk to or from school alone were younger and reported riskier road-crossing behaviour, although children who walk accompanied tended to have higher pedestrian collision severity. "Negligent Behaviour" related to road-crossing was significantly associated with higher pedestrian collision severity, with predictors of "Negligent Behaviour" including the lack of pedestrian safety knowledge and greater exposure to traffic in terms of time spent walking. More than half of the reported pedestrian collisions involved a bicycle, and older boys (10-15 years) were most at risk of experiencing a severe pedestrian injury. The findings substantiate emerging evidence that children in low-income settings are at greater risk for child pedestrian injury, and emphasise the need for evidence-based safety promotion and injury prevention interventions in these settings. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  10. Pedestrian deaths in children--potential for prevention.

    LENUS (Irish Health Repository)

    Hamilton, K

    2015-01-01

    The National Paediatric Mortality Database was reviewed for the six year period 1st January 2006 to 31st December 2011 and all pedestrian deaths extracted, after review of available data the deaths were categorized as either traffic or non-traffic related. There were 45 child pedestrian fatalities in the period examined. Traffic related deaths accounted for 26 (58%) vs. 19 (42%) non-traffic related. Analysis of the deaths showed there was a male preponderance 28 (62%), weekend trend 22 (49%) with an evening 16 (35%) and summer peak 20 (44%). The highest proportion of deaths occurred in the 1-4 year age group 24 (53%), with 13 (28%) due to low speed vehicle rollovers, mainly occurring in residential driveways 8 (61%). Child pedestrian fatalities are highly preventable through the modification of risk factors including behavioural, social and environmental. Preventative action needs to be addressed, particularly in relation to non-traffic related deaths i.e, low speed vehicle rollovers.

  11. Pedestrian Flow in the Mean Field Limit

    KAUST Repository

    Haji Ali, Abdul Lateef

    2012-11-01

    We study the mean-field limit of a particle-based system modeling the behavior of many indistinguishable pedestrians as their number increases. The base model is a modified version of Helbing\\'s social force model. In the mean-field limit, the time-dependent density of two-dimensional pedestrians satisfies a four-dimensional integro-differential Fokker-Planck equation. To approximate the solution of the Fokker-Planck equation we use a time-splitting approach and solve the diffusion part using a Crank-Nicholson method. The advection part is solved using a Lax-Wendroff-Leveque method or an upwind Backward Euler method depending on the advection speed. Moreover, we use multilevel Monte Carlo to estimate observables from the particle-based system. We discuss these numerical methods, and present numerical results showing the convergence of observables that were calculated using the particle-based model as the number of pedestrians increases to those calculated using the probability density function satisfying the Fokker-Planck equation.

  12. Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis of Telescopic Mechanism for Truss Structure Bridge Inspection Vehicle Under Pedestrian Excitation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wenwen Sui

    Full Text Available Abstract Nonlinear dynamic analysis of an axially moving telescopic mechanism for truss structure bridge inspection vehicle under pedestrian excitation is carried out. A biomechanically inspired inverted-pendulum model is utilized to simplify the pedestrian. The nonlinear equations of motion for the beam-pedestrian system are derived using the Hamilton's principle. The equations are transformed into two ordinary differential equations by applying the Galerkin's method at the first two orders. The solutions to the equations are acquired by using the Newmark-β method associated with the Newton-Raphson method. The time-dependent feature of the eigenfunctions for the two beams are taken into consideration in the solutions. Accordingly, the equations of motion for a simplified system, in which the pedestrian is regarded as moving cart, are given. In the numerical examples, dynamic responses of the telescopic mechanism in eight conditions of different beam-telescoping and pedestrian-moving directions are simulated. Comparisons between the vibrations of the beams under pedestrian excitation and corresponding moving cart are carried out to investigate the influence of the pedestrian excitation on the telescopic mechanism. The results show that the displacement of the telescopic mechanism under pedestrian excitation is smaller than that under moving cart especially when the pedestrian approaches the beams end. Additionally, compared with moving cart, the pedestrian excitation can effectively strengthen the vibration when the beam extension is small or when the pedestrian is close to the beams end.

  13. Nighttime Foreground Pedestrian Detection Based on Three-Dimensional Voxel Surface Model

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jing Li

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available Pedestrian detection is among the most frequently-used preprocessing tasks in many surveillance application fields, from low-level people counting to high-level scene understanding. Even though many approaches perform well in the daytime with sufficient illumination, pedestrian detection at night is still a critical and challenging problem for video surveillance systems. To respond to this need, in this paper, we provide an affordable solution with a near-infrared stereo network camera, as well as a novel three-dimensional foreground pedestrian detection model. Specifically, instead of using an expensive thermal camera, we build a near-infrared stereo vision system with two calibrated network cameras and near-infrared lamps. The core of the system is a novel voxel surface model, which is able to estimate the dynamic changes of three-dimensional geometric information of the surveillance scene and to segment and locate foreground pedestrians in real time. A free update policy for unknown points is designed for model updating, and the extracted shadow of the pedestrian is adopted to remove foreground false alarms. To evaluate the performance of the proposed model, the system is deployed in several nighttime surveillance scenes. Experimental results demonstrate that our method is capable of nighttime pedestrian segmentation and detection in real time under heavy occlusion. In addition, the qualitative and quantitative comparison results show that our work outperforms classical background subtraction approaches and a recent RGB-D method, as well as achieving comparable performance with the state-of-the-art deep learning pedestrian detection method even with a much lower hardware cost.

  14. Nighttime Foreground Pedestrian Detection Based on Three-Dimensional Voxel Surface Model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Jing; Zhang, Fangbing; Wei, Lisong; Yang, Tao; Lu, Zhaoyang

    2017-10-16

    Pedestrian detection is among the most frequently-used preprocessing tasks in many surveillance application fields, from low-level people counting to high-level scene understanding. Even though many approaches perform well in the daytime with sufficient illumination, pedestrian detection at night is still a critical and challenging problem for video surveillance systems. To respond to this need, in this paper, we provide an affordable solution with a near-infrared stereo network camera, as well as a novel three-dimensional foreground pedestrian detection model. Specifically, instead of using an expensive thermal camera, we build a near-infrared stereo vision system with two calibrated network cameras and near-infrared lamps. The core of the system is a novel voxel surface model, which is able to estimate the dynamic changes of three-dimensional geometric information of the surveillance scene and to segment and locate foreground pedestrians in real time. A free update policy for unknown points is designed for model updating, and the extracted shadow of the pedestrian is adopted to remove foreground false alarms. To evaluate the performance of the proposed model, the system is deployed in several nighttime surveillance scenes. Experimental results demonstrate that our method is capable of nighttime pedestrian segmentation and detection in real time under heavy occlusion. In addition, the qualitative and quantitative comparison results show that our work outperforms classical background subtraction approaches and a recent RGB-D method, as well as achieving comparable performance with the state-of-the-art deep learning pedestrian detection method even with a much lower hardware cost.

  15. Agent Based Modeling and Simulation of Pedestrian Crowds In Panic Situations

    KAUST Repository

    Alrashed, Mohammed

    2016-11-01

    The increasing occurrence of panic stampedes during mass events has motivated studying the impact of panic on crowd dynamics and the simulation of pedestrian flows in panic situations. The lack of understanding of panic stampedes still causes hundreds of fatalities each year, not to mention the scarce methodical studies of panic behavior capable of envisaging such crowd dynamics. Under those circumstances, there are thousands of fatalities and twice that many of injuries every year caused be crowd stampede worldwide, despite the tremendous efforts of crowd control and massive numbers of safekeeping forces. Pedestrian crowd dynamics are generally predictable in high-density crowds where pedestrians cannot move freely and thus gives rise to self-propelling interactions between pedestrians. Although every pedestrian has personal preferences, the motion dynamics can be modeled as a social force in such crowds. These forces are representations of internal preferences and objectives to perform certain actions or movements. The corresponding forces can be controlled for each individual to represent a different variety of behaviors that can be associated with panic situations such as escaping danger, clustering, and pushing. In this thesis, we use an agent-based model of pedestrian behavior in panic situations to predict the collective human behavior in such crowd dynamics. The proposed simulations suggests a practical way to alleviate fatalities and minimize the evacuation time in panic situations. Moreover, we introduce contagious panic and pushing behavior, resulting in a more realistic crowd dynamics model. The proposed methodology describes the intensity and spread of panic for each individual as a function of distances between pedestrians.

  16. Using connected vehicle technology to deliver timely warnings to pedestrians.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-07-01

    Pedestrian injuries and deaths caused by collisions with motor vehicles are on the : rise in the U.S. One factor that may increase the risk of such collisions is pedestrian : mobile device use. Both field observations and controlled experiments indic...

  17. Method for Pedestrian Crossing Risk Assessment and Safety Level Determination: the Case Study of Tallinn

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Pashkevich, M.; Krasilnikova, A.; Antov, D.

    2016-07-01

    Pedestrians are a part of vulnerable road users which safety requires a special attention. Official statistics in Estonia from the last decade returns the following numbers: around 30 % of all road traffic accidents in the country were accidents with pedestrians, 32 % of all traffic fatalities were finished with pedestrian death. Pedestrian crossing has the biggest risk level between all kinds of pedestrian facilities, because it includes a direct conflict point between vehicle and pedestrian traffics. The article presents a method to assess risk of pedestrian crossing users and to determine safety level of this road infrastructure element. This approach is based on observation and collection of infrastructural as well as traffic data, which includes: (1) information about each pedestrian crossing facility, its location and state, (2) data about accidents with pedestrians and their features, (3) data from road traffic measurements. The main advantages of the described method are universality and comprehensiveness. The case study was done in Kristiine district of the city Tallinn, which was chosen as the most typical average district of Estonian capital. Results of this study are also presented in the article. (Author)

  18. Children at risk: A comparison of child pedestrian traffic collisions in Santiago, Chile, and Seoul, South Korea.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Blazquez, Carola; Lee, Jae Seung; Zegras, Christopher

    2016-01-01

    We examine and compare pedestrian-vehicle collisions and injury outcomes involving school-age children between 5 and 18 years of age in the capital cities of Santiago, Chile, and Seoul, South Korea. We conduct descriptive analysis of the child pedestrian-vehicle collision (P-VC) data (904 collisions for Santiago and 3,505 for Seoul) reported by the police between 2010 and 2011. We also statistically analyze factors associated with child P-VCs, by both incident severity and age group, using 3 regression models: negative binomial, probit, and spatial lag models. Descriptive statistics suggest that child pedestrians in Seoul have a higher risk of being involved in traffic crashes than their counterparts in Santiago. However, in Seoul a greater proportion of children are unharmed as a result of these incidents, whereas more child pedestrians are killed in Santiago. Younger children in Seoul suffer more injuries from P-VCs than in Santiago. The majority of P-VCs in both cities tend to occur in the afternoon and evening, at intersections in Santiago and at midblock locations in Seoul. Our model results suggest that the resident population of children is positively associated with P-VCs in both cities, and school concentrations apparently increase P-VC risk among older children in Santiago. Bus stops are associated with higher P-VCs in Seoul, and subway stations relate to higher P-VCs among older children in Santiago. Zone-level land use mix was negatively related to child P-VCs in Seoul but not in Santiago. Arterial roads are associated with fewer P-VCs, especially for younger children in both cities. A share of collector roads is associated with increased P-VCs in Seoul but fewer P-VCs in Santiago. Hilliness is related to fewer P-VCs in both cities. Differences in these model results for Santiago and Seoul warrant additional analysis, as do the differences in results across model type (negative binomial versus spatial lag models). To reduce child P-VCs, this study

  19. Real-time Pedestrian Crossing Recognition for Assistive Outdoor Navigation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fontanesi, Simone; Frigerio, Alessandro; Fanucci, Luca; Li, William

    2015-01-01

    Navigation in urban environments can be difficult for people who are blind or visually impaired. In this project, we present a system and algorithms for recognizing pedestrian crossings in outdoor environments. Our goal is to provide navigation cues for crossing the street and reaching an island or sidewalk safely. Using a state-of-the-art Multisense S7S sensor, we collected 3D pointcloud data for real-time detection of pedestrian crossing and generation of directional guidance. We demonstrate improvements to a baseline, monocular-camera-based system by integrating 3D spatial prior information extracted from the pointcloud. Our system's parameters can be set to the actual dimensions of real-world settings, which enables robustness of occlusion and perspective transformation. The system works especially well in non-occlusion situations, and is reasonably accurate under different kind of conditions. As well, our large dataset of pedestrian crossings, organized by different types and situations of pedestrian crossings in order to reflect real-word environments, is publicly available in a commonly used format (ROS bagfiles) for further research.

  20. Modeling of pedestrian evacuation based on the particle swarm optimization algorithm

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zheng, Yaochen; Chen, Jianqiao; Wei, Junhong; Guo, Xiwei

    2012-09-01

    By applying the evolutionary algorithm of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), we have developed a new pedestrian evacuation model. In the new model, we first introduce the local pedestrian’s density concept which is defined as the number of pedestrians distributed in a certain area divided by the area. Both the maximum velocity and the size of a particle (pedestrian) are supposed to be functions of the local density. An attempt to account for the impact consequence between pedestrians is also made by introducing a threshold of injury into the model. The updating rule of the model possesses heterogeneous spatial and temporal characteristics. Numerical examples demonstrate that the model is capable of simulating the typical features of evacuation captured by CA (Cellular Automata) based models. As contrast to CA-based simulations, in which the velocity (via step size) of a pedestrian in each time step is a constant value and limited in several directions, the new model is more flexible in describing pedestrians’ velocities since they are not limited in discrete values and directions according to the new updating rule.

  1. Laser-based pedestrian tracking in outdoor environments by multiple mobile robots.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ozaki, Masataka; Kakimuma, Kei; Hashimoto, Masafumi; Takahashi, Kazuhiko

    2012-10-29

    This paper presents an outdoors laser-based pedestrian tracking system using a group of mobile robots located near each other. Each robot detects pedestrians from its own laser scan image using an occupancy-grid-based method, and the robot tracks the detected pedestrians via Kalman filtering and global-nearest-neighbor (GNN)-based data association. The tracking data is broadcast to multiple robots through intercommunication and is combined using the covariance intersection (CI) method. For pedestrian tracking, each robot identifies its own posture using real-time-kinematic GPS (RTK-GPS) and laser scan matching. Using our cooperative tracking method, all the robots share the tracking data with each other; hence, individual robots can always recognize pedestrians that are invisible to any other robot. The simulation and experimental results show that cooperating tracking provides the tracking performance better than conventional individual tracking does. Our tracking system functions in a decentralized manner without any central server, and therefore, this provides a degree of scalability and robustness that cannot be achieved by conventional centralized architectures.

  2. Exploring pedestrian movement patterns

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Orellana, D.A.

    2012-01-01

    The main objective of this thesis is to develop an approach for exploring, analysing and interpreting movement patterns of pedestrians interacting with the environment. This objective is broken down in sub-objectives related to four research questions. A case study of the movement of visitors in a

  3. Effect of cell phone distraction on pediatric pedestrian injury risk.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stavrinos, Despina; Byington, Katherine W; Schwebel, David C

    2009-02-01

    Early adolescents are using cell phones with increasing frequency. Cell phones are known to distract motor vehicle drivers to the point that their safety is jeopardized, but it is unclear if cell phones might also distract child pedestrians. This study was designed to examine the influence of talking on a cell phone for pediatric pedestrian injury risk. Seventy-seven children aged 10 to 11 years old completed simulated road crossings in an immersive, interactive virtual pedestrian environment. In a within-subjects design, children crossed the virtual street 6 times while undistracted and 6 times while distracted by a cell phone conversation with an unfamiliar research assistant. Participants also completed several other experimental tasks hypothesized to predict the impact of distraction while crossing the street and talking on a cell phone. Children's pedestrian safety was compromised when distracted by a cell phone conversation. While distracted, children were less attentive to traffic; left less safe time between their crossing and the next arriving vehicle; experienced more collisions and close calls with oncoming traffic; and waited longer before beginning to cross the street. Analyses testing experience using a cell phone and experience as a pedestrian yielded few significant results, suggesting that distraction on the cell phone might affect children's pedestrian safety no matter what their experience level. There was some indication that younger children and children who are less attentive and more oppositional may be slightly more susceptible to distraction while talking on the cell phone than older, more attentive, and less oppositional children. Our results suggest that cell phones distract preadolescent children while crossing streets.

  4. Validity of instruments to assess students' travel and pedestrian safety.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mendoza, Jason A; Watson, Kathy; Baranowski, Tom; Nicklas, Theresa A; Uscanga, Doris K; Hanfling, Marcus J

    2010-05-18

    Safe Routes to School (SRTS) programs are designed to make walking and bicycling to school safe and accessible for children. Despite their growing popularity, few validated measures exist for assessing important outcomes such as type of student transport or pedestrian safety behaviors. This research validated the SRTS school travel survey and a pedestrian safety behavior checklist. Fourth grade students completed a brief written survey on how they got to school that day with set responses. Test-retest reliability was obtained 3-4 hours apart. Convergent validity of the SRTS travel survey was assessed by comparison to parents' report. For the measure of pedestrian safety behavior, 10 research assistants observed 29 students at a school intersection for completion of 8 selected pedestrian safety behaviors. Reliability was determined in two ways: correlations between the research assistants' ratings to that of the Principal Investigator (PI) and intraclass correlations (ICC) across research assistant ratings. The SRTS travel survey had high test-retest reliability (kappa = 0.97, n = 96, p < 0.001) and convergent validity (kappa = 0.87, n = 81, p < 0.001). The pedestrian safety behavior checklist had moderate reliability across research assistants' ratings (ICC = 0.48) and moderate correlation with the PI (r = 0.55, p = < 0.01). When two raters simultaneously used the instrument, the ICC increased to 0.65. Overall percent agreement (91%), sensitivity (85%) and specificity (83%) were acceptable. These validated instruments can be used to assess SRTS programs. The pedestrian safety behavior checklist may benefit from further formative work.

  5. Kinetic theory of situated agents applied to pedestrian flow in a corridor

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rangel-Huerta, A.; Muñoz-Meléndez, A.

    2010-03-01

    A situated agent-based model for simulation of pedestrian flow in a corridor is presented. In this model, pedestrians choose their paths freely and make decisions based on local criteria for solving collision conflicts. The crowd consists of multiple walking agents equipped with a function of perception as well as a competitive rule-based strategy that enables pedestrians to reach free access areas. Pedestrians in our model are autonomous entities capable of perceiving and making decisions. They apply socially accepted conventions, such as avoidance rules, as well as individual preferences such as the use of specific exit points, or the execution of eventual comfort turns resulting in spontaneous changes of walking speed. Periodic boundary conditions were considered in order to determine the density-average walking speed, and the density-average activity with respect to specific parameters: comfort angle turn and frequency of angle turn of walking agents. The main contribution of this work is an agent-based model where each pedestrian is represented as an autonomous agent. At the same time the pedestrian crowd dynamics is framed by the kinetic theory of biological systems.

  6. A collision avoidance model for two-pedestrian groups: Considering random avoidance patterns

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhou, Zhuping; Cai, Yifei; Ke, Ruimin; Yang, Jiwei

    2017-06-01

    Grouping is a common phenomenon in pedestrian crowds and group modeling is still an open challenging problem. When grouping pedestrians avoid each other, different patterns can be observed. Pedestrians can keep close with group members and avoid other groups in cluster. Also, they can avoid other groups separately. Considering this randomness in avoidance patterns, we propose a collision avoidance model for two-pedestrian groups. In our model, the avoidance model is proposed based on velocity obstacle method at first. Then grouping model is established using Distance constrained line (DCL), by transforming DCL into the framework of velocity obstacle, the avoidance model and grouping model are successfully put into one unified calculation structure. Within this structure, an algorithm is developed to solve the problem when solutions of the two models conflict with each other. Two groups of bidirectional pedestrian experiments are designed to verify the model. The accuracy of avoidance behavior and grouping behavior is validated in the microscopic level, while the lane formation phenomenon and fundamental diagrams is validated in the macroscopic level. The experiments results show our model is convincing and has a good expansibility to describe three or more pedestrian groups.

  7. Pedestrian interaction with vehicles : roles of explicit and implicit communication

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Dey, D.; Terken, J.M.B.

    This paper presents a study that aimed to identify the importance of eye contact and gestures between pedestrians and drivers. A video-based observation and coding was undertaken to categorize the road-crossing and communication behavior of pedestrians and drivers in busy traffic situations where

  8. Pedestrian Choice Behavior at Shopping Mall Intersections in China and the United States

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bitgood, Stephen; Davey, Gareth; Huang, Xiaoyi; Fung, Holly

    2013-01-01

    Pedestrian navigation through public spaces reflects the nature of interaction between behavior and environment. This study compared pedestrian choice behavior at shopping mall intersections in China and the United States. The study found that in both countries (a) pedestrians chose movement patterns that involved the fewest steps and (b) there…

  9. Pedestrian temporal and spatial gap acceptance at mid-block street crossing in developing world.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pawar, Digvijay S; Patil, Gopal R

    2015-02-01

    Most of the midblock pedestrian crossings on urban roads in India are uncontrolled; wherein the high degree of discretion in pedestrians' behavior while crossing the traffic stream, has made the situation complex to analyze. Vehicles do not yield to pedestrians, even though the traffic laws give priority to pedestrians over motorized vehicles at unsignalized pedestrian crossings. Therefore, a pedestrian has to decide if an available gap is safe or not for crossing. This paper aims to investigate pedestrian temporal and spatial gap acceptance for midblock street crossings. Field data were collected using video camera at two midblock pedestrian crossings. The data extraction in laboratory resulted in 1107 pedestrian gaps. Available gaps, pedestrians' decision, traffic volume, etc. were extracted from the videos. While crossing a road with multiple lanes, rolling gap acceptance behavior was observed. Using binary logit analysis, six utility models were developed, three each for temporal and spatial gaps. The 50th percentile temporal and spatial gaps ranged from 4.1 to 4.8s and 67 to 79 m respectively, whereas the 85th percentile temporal and spatial gaps ranged from 5 to 5.8s and 82 to 95 m respectively. These gap values were smaller than that reported in the studies in developed countries. The speed of conflicting vehicle was found to be significant in spatial gap but not in temporal gap acceptance. The gap acceptance decision was also found to be affected by the type of conflicting vehicles. The insights from this study can be used for the safety and performance evaluation of uncontrolled midblock street crossings in developing countries. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd and National Safety Council. All rights reserved.

  10. A Review on Macroscopic Pedestrian Flow Modelling

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anna Kormanová

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper reviews several various approaches to macroscopic pedestrian modelling. It describes hydrodynamic models based on similarity of pedestrian flow with fluids and gases; first-order flow models that use fundamental diagrams and conservation equation; and a model similar to LWR vehicular traffic model, which allows non-classical shocks. At the end of the paper there is stated a comparison of described models, intended to find appropriate macroscopic model to eventually be a part of a hybrid model. The future work of the author is outlined.

  11. Age and pedestrian injury severity in motor-vehicle crashes: a heteroskedastic logit analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Joon-Ki; Ulfarsson, Gudmundur F; Shankar, Venkataraman N; Kim, Sungyop

    2008-09-01

    This research explores the injury severity of pedestrians in motor-vehicle crashes. It is hypothesized that the variance of unobserved pedestrian characteristics increases with age. In response, a heteroskedastic generalized extreme value model is used. The analysis links explanatory factors with four injury outcomes: fatal, incapacitating, non-incapacitating, and possible or no injury. Police-reported crash data between 1997 and 2000 from North Carolina, USA, are used. The results show that pedestrian age induces heteroskedasticity which affects the probability of fatal injury. The effect grows more pronounced with increasing age past 65. The heteroskedastic model provides a better fit than the multinomial logit model. Notable factors increasing the probability of fatal pedestrian injury: increasing pedestrian age, male driver, intoxicated driver (2.7 times greater probability of fatality), traffic sign, commercial area, darkness with or without streetlights (2-4 times greater probability of fatality), sport-utility vehicle, truck, freeway, two-way divided roadway, speeding-involved, off roadway, motorist turning or backing, both driver and pedestrian at fault, and pedestrian only at fault. Conversely, the probability of a fatal injury decreased: with increasing driver age, during the PM traffic peak, with traffic signal control, in inclement weather, on a curved roadway, at a crosswalk, and when walking along roadway.

  12. Experimental validation and calibration of pedestrian loading models for footbridges

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ricciardelli, Fransesco; Briatico, C; Ingólfsson, Einar Thór

    2006-01-01

    Different patterns of pedestrian loading of footbridges exist, whose occurrence depends on a number of parameters, such as the bridge span, frequency, damping and mass, and the pedestrian density and activity. In this paper analytical models for the transient action of one walker and for the stat...

  13. Mapping of pedestrian characteristics and level of service for facilities at Universitas Negeri Malang using geographic information system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rahayuningsih, Titi; Pranoto, Nindyawati, Umniati, B. Sri; Mardhika, Moch Aqfa Syabahid

    2017-09-01

    Universitas Negeri Malang (UM) is a university with the second largest academic community in Malang. The activities of the academic community should be supported by adequate facilities, such as pedestrian facilities—crucial yet much neglected matters, so pedestrians to walk along the roadway. As a result, conflicts between pedestrians with motor vehicle users and accidents might occur at any time. This research aimed at: 1) investigating the geometric conditions of pedestrian facilities at UM; 2) identifying the characteristics of pedestrians and the pedestrian facilities at UM; and 3) determining the level of service for pedestrian facilities at UM using Geographic Information System (GIS). The research was conducted through survey of location, survey of geometric conditions, estimation of the number of pedestrians using sidewalk (data were recorded every 15 minutes), measurement of pedestrian speed, and questionnaire about pedestrians' identity, destination, as well as travel time and distance. Data analysis was carried out to identify the pedestrian characteristics, pedestrian flow characteristics, and pedestrian level of service. The research result showed that the percentage of road segments in campus without sidewalks was 52%. The average width of sidewalk was 1.33 m, which was less than the minimum standard of i.e. 2 m. In terms of pedestrian characteristics, the pedestrians consisted of more female (51%) who were mostly students of the Faculty of Letters whose destination was classroom building. The maximum pedestrian flow was at 10.00-13.30 i.e. 4.2018 p/m/min. The average speed of pedestrian was 63.49 m/min. The highest pedestrian density of 0.0609 p/m2 occurred at 10.00-13.30. The largest walking space was 28.0348 m2/p and occurred in the afternoon at 13.30-17.00. The level of service for pedestrian facilities belonged to category A in the morning and afternoon. The level of service at 10.00-13.30 decreased to category B.

  14. Acute Renal Failure following Accidental Potassium Bromate ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Accidental poisoning is common in children. Potassium bromate is a commonly used additive and raising agent in many edibles particularly bread, a staple food worldwide, yet its accidental poisoning has hitherto, not been documented in Nigeria. We report an unusual case of acute renal failure following accidental ...

  15. Development Study of Pedestrian Bridge at Gramedia Bookstore Jalan Raden Intan Bandar Lampung

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bernaditha, C. M.

    2018-03-01

    Bandar Lampung with high enough population densities has provides transportation facilities for pedestrian such as pedestrian bridge. This pedestrian bridges spread at Bandar Lampung’s traffic congested area, shopping centre nor education centre. Jl. Raden Intan as one of primary collector road with four lanes one direction at Bandar Lampung has high LHR (average daily traffic) movemenet pattern especially at morning, day and afternoon rush hour that make it difficult for pedestrian who want to cross the road. Therefore pedes trian bridge at this section Jl. Raden Intan highly needed especially at in front of Gramedia Bookstore with large amount of crossing pedestrian volume. From this research and analysis, found that number of LHR (average daily traffic) at Jl. Raden Intan shows large number traffic volume that is 4509 passenger car unit/hour at morning rush hour (07.00-08.30), with value of V/C Ratio or Degree of Saturation reach 0,92 (E category), while the amount of pedestrian who cross ahead from Gramedia Bookstore to Bank Muammalat is 29 people per 15 minutes. Other than that based on the calculation results of pedestrian volume and traffic volume at rush hour as follow: average pedestrian volume at rush hour is 146 people/hour between the range 100-1250 people/hour and traffic volume 7521 vehicles/hour over than 7000 vehicles/hour, and also the value PV2=1,682x1010 which is means the value of PV2 worth over 2x108, moreover the speed plan Jl. Raden Intan between 60-80 km/hour above 70 km/hour. Based on the calculation and analysis above, it can be concluded transportation facilities recommended for Jl. Raden Intan is pedestrian bridge.

  16. Mean field games with nonlinear mobilities in pedestrian dynamics

    KAUST Repository

    Burger, Martin; Di Francesco, Marco; Markowich, Peter A.; Wolfram, Marie Therese

    2014-01-01

    In this paper we present an optimal control approach modeling fast exit scenarios in pedestrian crowds. In particular we consider the case of a large human crowd trying to exit a room as fast as possible. The motion of every pedestrian is determined by minimizing a cost functional, which depends on his/her position, velocity, exit time and the overall density of people. This microscopic setup leads in the mean-field limit to a parabolic optimal control problem. We discuss the modeling of the macroscopic optimal control approach and show how the optimal conditions relate to the Hughes model for pedestrian flow. Furthermore we provide results on the existence and uniqueness of minimizers and illustrate the behavior of the model with various numerical results.

  17. Mean field games with nonlinear mobilities in pedestrian dynamics

    KAUST Repository

    Burger, Martin

    2014-04-01

    In this paper we present an optimal control approach modeling fast exit scenarios in pedestrian crowds. In particular we consider the case of a large human crowd trying to exit a room as fast as possible. The motion of every pedestrian is determined by minimizing a cost functional, which depends on his/her position, velocity, exit time and the overall density of people. This microscopic setup leads in the mean-field limit to a parabolic optimal control problem. We discuss the modeling of the macroscopic optimal control approach and show how the optimal conditions relate to the Hughes model for pedestrian flow. Furthermore we provide results on the existence and uniqueness of minimizers and illustrate the behavior of the model with various numerical results.

  18. Agent Based Modeling and Simulation of Pedestrian Crowds In Panic Situations

    KAUST Repository

    Alrashed, Mohammed

    2016-01-01

    to self-propelling interactions between pedestrians. Although every pedestrian has personal preferences, the motion dynamics can be modeled as a social force in such crowds. These forces are representations of internal preferences and objectives to perform

  19. Some aspects of the safety of elderly pedestrians and cyclists.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hagenzieker, M.P.

    1996-01-01

    In this paper some aspects of the safety of elderly pedestrians and cyclists will be addressed. First, fatality data concerning older pedestrians and cyclists will be presented for a number of countries. Then, attention will be paid to fatality rates per 100,000 inhabitants, and the risks of elderly

  20. Pedestrian-motorcycle collisions: associated risks and issues

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ariffin Aqbal Hafeez

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available From the statistics, there are serious concerns over the relatively high number of fatal motor vehicle crashes involving pedestrianmotorcycle in Malaysia. The high number of motorcycle registration on road, compounded by its popularity as the major mode of transportation in the nation, imposes safety risk to pedestrians, as well as to other road users. Data from 1,626 related road crashes of Royal Malaysia Police (RMP for the 2009-2013 period were retrospectively collected via MIROS Road Accident Analysis and Database System (M-ROADS. The data were then analyzed via logistic regression method to determine associations between risks and injury severity in pedestrian-motorcycle collisions. The results indicate that five factors were significantly related to injury severity, which include age, location of body injury, as well as speed limit, road geometry and lighting condition of collision site. Subsequently, focus group discussions with stakeholders were also conducted to gather relevant data to identify related issues and suggestions on motorcycle safety technology with regards to collision with pedestrian.

  1. Gender Differences in Pedestrian Perception and Satisfaction on the Walkability of Kuala Lumpur City Center

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Arshad Ahmad Kamil

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The quality of built environment usually influences the walkability of a city. This is because each pedestrian walk differently on different type of facilities or built environment provided to them. This paper aims to investigate whether gender differences influences the pedestrian perception and satisfaction level at three sidewalks located within the Kuala Lumpur City Center by means of questionnaire survey. A total of 317 pedestrians were involved in the questionnaire survey at the three different sidewalk locations. The result shows significant differences in mean satisfaction value between male and female pedestrians. Female pedestrian give lower satisfaction value for overall travel experience at Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman but higher satisfaction value at Petaling Street and Bukit Bintang compared to male pedestrian. Overall, the satisfaction level was rated between acceptable to satisfactory regardless of gender differences. Improvements should be made for the safety parameter because both male and female pedestrian gives lowest satisfaction level in that area.

  2. Development of Statewide Guidelines for Implementing Leading Pedestrian Intervals in Florida

    Science.gov (United States)

    2017-12-01

    Pedestrian safety is an ongoing major concern throughout the United States and is one of the highest priorities for the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). Vehicles often fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections, especially when pedestr...

  3. Pedestrian Movement Direction Recognition Using Convolutional Neural Networks

    OpenAIRE

    Dominguez-Sanchez, Alex; Cazorla, Miguel; Orts-Escolano, Sergio

    2017-01-01

    Pedestrian movement direction recognition is an important factor in autonomous driver assistance and security surveillance systems. Pedestrians are the most crucial and fragile moving objects in streets, roads, and events, where thousands of people may gather on a regular basis. People flow analysis on zebra crossings and in shopping centers or events such as demonstrations are a key element to improve safety and to enable autonomous cars to drive in real life environments. This paper focuses...

  4. Velocity correlations and spatial dependencies between neighbors in a unidirectional flow of pedestrians

    Science.gov (United States)

    Porzycki, Jakub; WÄ s, Jarosław; Hedayatifar, Leila; Hassanibesheli, Forough; Kułakowski, Krzysztof

    2017-08-01

    The aim of the paper is an analysis of self-organization patterns observed in the unidirectional flow of pedestrians. On the basis of experimental data from Zhang et al. [J. Zhang et al., J. Stat. Mech. (2011) P06004, 10.1088/1742-5468/2011/06/P06004], we analyze the mutual positions and velocity correlations between pedestrians when walking along a corridor. The angular and spatial dependencies of the mutual positions reveal a spatial structure that remains stable during the crowd motion. This structure differs depending on the value of n , for the consecutive n th -nearest-neighbor position set. The preferred position for the first-nearest neighbor is on the side of the pedestrian, while for further neighbors, this preference shifts to the axis of movement. The velocity correlations vary with the angle formed by the pair of neighboring pedestrians and the direction of motion and with the time delay between pedestrians' movements. The delay dependence of the correlations shows characteristic oscillations, produced by the velocity oscillations when striding; however, a filtering of the main frequency of individual striding out reduces the oscillations only partially. We conclude that pedestrians select their path directions so as to evade the necessity of continuously adjusting their speed to their neighbors'. They try to keep a given distance, but follow the person in front of them, as well as accepting and observing pedestrians on their sides. Additionally, we show an empirical example that illustrates the shape of a pedestrian's personal space during movement.

  5. Simulating bi-directional pedestrian flow in a cellular automaton model considering the body-turning behavior

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jin, Cheng-Jie; Jiang, Rui; Yin, Jun-Lin; Dong, Li-Yun; Li, Dawei

    2017-09-01

    In the experiments of bi-directional pedestrian flow, it is often observed that pedestrians turn their bodies and change from walking straight to walking sideways, in order to mitigate or avoid the conflicts with opposite walking ones. When these conflicts disappear, pedestrians restore and walk straight again. In the turning states, the forward velocities of pedestrians are not affected. In order to simulate this body-turning behavior, we use a cellular automaton (CA) model named ITP model, which has been proposed before. But the occupied area of one pedestrian is set as 0.4 m∗0.2 m. After the introduction of new rules of turnings and restorations, the pedestrians become more intelligent and flexible during the lane formation process, and some improvements of the fundamental diagram of pedestrian flow can be found. The simulation results of two different scenarios under open boundary conditions are also presented, and compared with the experimental data. It is shown that the new model performs much better than the original model in various tests, which further confirms the validity of the new rules. We think this approach is one useful contribution to the pedestrian flow modeling.

  6. Walk This Way: Improving Pedestrian Agent-Based Models through Scene Activity Analysis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrew Crooks

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available Pedestrian movement is woven into the fabric of urban regions. With more people living in cities than ever before, there is an increased need to understand and model how pedestrians utilize and move through space for a variety of applications, ranging from urban planning and architecture to security. Pedestrian modeling has been traditionally faced with the challenge of collecting data to calibrate and validate such models of pedestrian movement. With the increased availability of mobility datasets from video surveillance and enhanced geolocation capabilities in consumer mobile devices we are now presented with the opportunity to change the way we build pedestrian models. Within this paper we explore the potential that such information offers for the improvement of agent-based pedestrian models. We introduce a Scene- and Activity-Aware Agent-Based Model (SA2-ABM, a method for harvesting scene activity information in the form of spatiotemporal trajectories, and incorporate this information into our models. In order to assess and evaluate the improvement offered by such information, we carry out a range of experiments using real-world datasets. We demonstrate that the use of real scene information allows us to better inform our model and enhance its predictive capabilities.

  7. Road users’ opinion about pedestrian safety in the emirate of Sharjah, UAE- survey results

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alhmoudi Mariam

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper is to investigate the pedestrian safety in Sharjah (UAE, and suggest recommendations to improve safety in the emirate. A survey data was collected from 570 participants in December, 2016, and included the following informations: measure the awareness of drivers and pedestrians, determine the behavior of road users, take general views from the road users, and measure the level of users` satisfaction. The results showed that characteristics of road users including (gender, age group, nationality, social status, education level and the income can affect their behavior at different levels and that may lead to pedestrian accidents. Also, most participants noticed that there are differences in the behavior of drivers and pedestrians based on their nationalities, and they indicated that pedestrian mistakes are main cause of this type of accidents. Moreover, the data showed that most drivers confirmed that they give more attention to pedestrians in mixed land used than other areas and they mentioned that “traffic signal + marked lines” is the clearest place for them to be attentive to pedestrians crossing the road. Overall, based on the results of this paper, there is an urgent need to re-evaluate the pedestrian facilities in the Emirate such as (Design, locations, and their availability as well as focusing more on the education and the law enforcement.

  8. Evaluating the impact of connectivity, continuity, and topography of sidewalk network on pedestrian safety.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Osama, Ahmed; Sayed, Tarek

    2017-10-01

    With the increasing demand for sustainability, walking is being encouraged as one of the main active modes of transportation. However, pedestrians are vulnerable to severe injuries when involved in crashes which can discourage road users from walking. Therefore, studying factors that affect the safety of pedestrians is important. This paper investigates the relationship between pedestrian-motorist crashes and various sidewalk network indicators in the city of Vancouver. The goal is to assess the impact of network connectivity, directness, and topography on pedestrian safety using macro-level collision prediction models. The models were developed using generalized linear regression and full Bayesian techniques. Both walking trips and vehicle kilometers travelled were used as the main traffic exposure variables in the models. The safety models supported the safety in numbers hypothesis showing a non-linear positive association between pedestrian-motorist crashes and the increase in walking trips and vehicle traffic. The model results also suggested that higher continuity, linearity, coverage, and slope of sidewalk networks were associated with lower crash occurrence. However, network connectivity was associated with higher crash occurrence. The spatial effects were accounted for in the full Bayes models and were found significant. The models provide insights about the factors that influence pedestrian safety and the spatial variability of pedestrian crashes within a city, which can be useful for the planning of pedestrian networks. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. Survey of pedestrian detection for advanced driver assistance systems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gerónimo, David; López, Antonio M; Sappa, Angel D; Graf, Thorsten

    2010-07-01

    Advanced driver assistance systems (ADASs), and particularly pedestrian protection systems (PPSs), have become an active research area aimed at improving traffic safety. The major challenge of PPSs is the development of reliable on-board pedestrian detection systems. Due to the varying appearance of pedestrians (e.g., different clothes, changing size, aspect ratio, and dynamic shape) and the unstructured environment, it is very difficult to cope with the demanded robustness of this kind of system. Two problems arising in this research area are the lack of public benchmarks and the difficulty in reproducing many of the proposed methods, which makes it difficult to compare the approaches. As a result, surveying the literature by enumerating the proposals one--after-another is not the most useful way to provide a comparative point of view. Accordingly, we present a more convenient strategy to survey the different approaches. We divide the problem of detecting pedestrians from images into different processing steps, each with attached responsibilities. Then, the different proposed methods are analyzed and classified with respect to each processing stage, favoring a comparative viewpoint. Finally, discussion of the important topics is presented, putting special emphasis on the future needs and challenges.

  10. Fuzzy Logic-Based Model That Incorporates Personality Traits for Heterogeneous Pedestrians

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhuxin Xue

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available Most models designed to simulate pedestrian dynamical behavior are based on the assumption that human decision-making can be described using precise values. This study proposes a new pedestrian model that incorporates fuzzy logic theory into a multi-agent system to address cognitive behavior that introduces uncertainty and imprecision during decision-making. We present a concept of decision preferences to represent the intrinsic control factors of decision-making. To realize the different decision preferences of heterogeneous pedestrians, the Five-Factor (OCEAN personality model is introduced to model the psychological characteristics of individuals. Then, a fuzzy logic-based approach is adopted for mapping the relationships between the personality traits and the decision preferences. Finally, we have developed an application using our model to simulate pedestrian dynamical behavior in several normal or non-panic scenarios, including a single-exit room, a hallway with obstacles, and a narrowing passage. The effectiveness of the proposed model is validated with a user study. The results show that the proposed model can generate more reasonable and heterogeneous behavior in the simulation and indicate that individual personality has a noticeable effect on pedestrian dynamical behavior.

  11. Teoría del comportamiento planificado e intención de infringir normas de transito en peatones Theory of planned behavior and pedestrians' intention to violate transit rules

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Emilio Moyano Díaz

    1997-12-01

    Full Text Available Desde la teoría del comportamiento planificado, se explora el comportamiento infractor de normas de tránsito en peatones y se prueba una escala de autoreporte acerca de cuán frecuentemente éstos infringen normas de tránsito, cometen errores y tienen lapsus al usar las vías. Participaran 146 habitantes de la ciudad de Santiago de Chile seleccionados intencionalmente, constituyendo un grupo balanceado a por sexo, b con y sin licencia para conducir, c por edad (jóvenes de 17 a 25 años y adultos de 26 y más, y d habiendo tenido y no alguna experiencia de accidente de tránsito, quienes completaron voluntaria y anónimamente un "Cuestionario de opinión sobre el comportamiento peatonal" y una "Escala de Comportamiento Peatonal". La actitud hacia la conducta, la norma subjetiva y el control percibido explican alrededor de un 40% de la varianza en la intención de realizar el comportamiento infractor (R Múltiple= .6266; R2=.3927; F=30.609; Sig.F pBased on the Theory of Planned Behavior, the paper analyzes traffic rules violating behavior in pedestrians, testing a self-report scale that deals with frequency of transit norms violations, error committing and having lapses when using the streets. 146 inhabitants of the city of Santiago were intentionally selected, making up a balanced sample in terms of a genre, b having or not driving license, c age (young, 17-25 years, or adult, 26 years or more, and d with experience of transit accident or not, who voluntarily and anonymously completed a "Questionnaire of opinion about pedestrian behavior" and a "Scale of Pedestrian Behavior". The attitude towards behavior, the subjective norm and the perceived control explain about 40% of the variance of intention to transgress. Pedestrian behavior is also significantly different for young vs. adults for the three variables of the model, demonstrating that the first are more prone to violating behavior, perceive the subjective norm as less inhibiting of

  12. The effect of spatial planning patterns on distribution of pedestrians ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    This study focuses on public spaces of residential neighbourhoods in the City of Nairobi. It establishes various spatial characteristics, hence patterns, that have a bearing on the distribution of pedestrians therein. A higher encounter rate of pedestrians is a desirable public space quality given that the higher degree of ...

  13. Experimental research on pedestrian lower leg impact

    Science.gov (United States)

    Constantin, B. A.; Iozsa, D. M.; Stan, C.

    2017-10-01

    The present paper is centred on the research of deceleration measured at the level of the lower leg during a pedestrian impact in multiple load cases. Basically, the used methodology for physical test setup is similar to EuroNCAP and European Union regulatory requirements. Due cost reduction reasons, it was not used a pneumatic system in order to launch the lower leg impactor in the direction of the vehicle front-end. During the test it was used an opposite solution, namely the vehicle being in motion, aiming the standstill lower leg impactor. The impactor has similar specifications to those at EU level, i.e. dimensions, materials, and principle of measurement of the deceleration magnitude. Therefore, all the results obtained during the study comply with the requirements of both EU regulation and EuroNCAP. As a limitation, due to unavailability of proper sensors in the equipment of the lower leg impactor, that could provide precise results, the bending angle, the shearing and the detailed data at the level of knee ligaments were not evaluated. The knee joint should be improved for future studies as some bending angles observed during the post processing of several impact video files were too high comparing to other studies. The paper highlights the first pedestrian impact physical test conducted by the author, following an extensive research in the field. Deceleration at the level of pedestrian knee can be substantially improved by providing enough volume between the bumper fascia and the front-end structure and by using pedestrian friendly materials for shock absorbers, such as foams.

  14. Exit selection strategy in pedestrian evacuation simulation with multi-exits

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Yue Hao; Zhang Bin-Ya; Shao Chun-Fu; Xing Yan

    2014-01-01

    A mixed strategy of the exit selection in a pedestrian evacuation simulation with multi-exits is constructed by fusing the distance-based and time-based strategies through a cognitive coefficient, in order to reduce the evacuation imbalance caused by the asymmetry of exits or pedestrian layout, to find a critical density to distinguish whether the strategy of exit selection takes effect or not, and to analyze the exit selection results with different cognitive coefficients. The strategy of exit selection is embedded in the computation of the shortest estimated distance in a dynamic parameter model, in which the concept of a jam area layer and the procedure of step-by-step expending are introduced. Simulation results indicate the characteristics of evacuation time gradually varying against cognitive coefficient and the effectiveness of reducing evacuation imbalance caused by the asymmetry of pedestrian or exit layout. It is found that there is a critical density to distinguish whether a pedestrian jam occurs in the evacuation and whether an exit selection strategy is in effect. It is also shown that the strategy of exit selection has no effect on the evacuation process in the no-effect phase with a low density, and that evacuation time and exit selection are dependent on the cognitive coefficient and pedestrian initial density in the in-effect phase with a high density. (general)

  15. Dynamic Response to Pedestrian Loads with Statistical Frequency Distribution

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Krenk, Steen

    2012-01-01

    on the magnitude of the resulting response. A frequency representation of vertical pedestrian load is developed, and a compact explicit formula is developed for the magnitude of the resulting response, in terms of the damping ratio of the structure, the bandwidth of the pedestrian load, and the mean footfall...... frequency. The accuracy of the formula is verified by a statistical moment analysis using the Lyapunov equations....

  16. Efficacy of virtual reality in pedestrian safety research.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deb, Shuchisnigdha; Carruth, Daniel W; Sween, Richard; Strawderman, Lesley; Garrison, Teena M

    2017-11-01

    Advances in virtual reality technology present new opportunities for human factors research in areas that are dangerous, difficult, or expensive to study in the real world. The authors developed a new pedestrian simulator using the HTC Vive head mounted display and Unity software. Pedestrian head position and orientation were tracked as participants attempted to safely cross a virtual signalized intersection (5.5 m). In 10% of 60 trials, a vehicle violated the traffic signal and in 10.84% of these trials, a collision between the vehicle and the pedestrian was observed. Approximately 11% of the participants experienced simulator sickness and withdrew from the study. Objective measures, including the average walking speed, indicate that participant behavior in VR matches published real world norms. Subjective responses indicate that the virtual environment was realistic and engaging. Overall, the study results confirm the effectiveness of the new virtual reality technology for research on full motion tasks. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  17. Auditory detectability of hybrid electric vehicles by pedestrians who are blind

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-11-15

    Quieter cars such as electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) may reduce auditory cues used by pedestrians to assess the state of nearby traffic and, as a result, their use may have an adverse impact on pedestrian safety. In order ...

  18. A Partial Proportional Odds Model for Pedestrian Crashes at Mid-Blocks in Melbourne Metropolitan Area

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Toran Pour Alireza

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Pedestrian crashes account for 11% of all reported traffic crashes in Melbourne metropolitan area between 2004 and 2013. There are very limited studies on pedestrian accidents at mid-blocks. Mid-block crashes account for about 46% of the total pedestrian crashes in Melbourne metropolitan area. Meanwhile, about 50% of all pedestrian fatalities occur at mid-blocks. In this research, Partial Proportional Odds (PPO model is applied to examine vehicle-pedestrian crash severity at mid-blocks in Melbourne metropolitan area. The PPO model is a logistic regression model that allows the covariates that meet the proportional odds assumption to affect different crash severity levels with the same magnitude; whereas the covariates that do not meet the proportional odds assumption can have different effects on different severity levels. In this research vehicle-pedestrian crashes at mid-blocks are analysed for first time. In addition, some factors such as distance of crashes to public transport stops, average road slope and some social characteristics are considered to develop the model in this research for first time. Results of PPO model show that speed limit, light condition, pedestrian age and gender, and vehicle type are the most significant factors that influence vehicle-pedestrian crash severity at mid-blocks.

  19. Effect of interactions between vehicles and pedestrians on fuel consumption and emissions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Xiang; Sun, Jian-Qiao

    2014-12-01

    This paper presents a study of variations of fuel consumption and emissions of vehicles due to random street crossings of pedestrians. The pedestrian and vehicle movement models as well as the interaction model between the two entities are presented. Extensive numerical simulations of single and multiple cars are carried out to investigate the traffic flow rate, vehicle average speed, fuel consumption, CO, HC and NOx emissions. Generally more noncompliant road-crossings of pedestrians lead to higher level of fuel consumptions and emissions of vehicles, and the traffic situation can be improved by imposing higher vehicle speed limit to some extent. Different traffic characteristics in low and high vehicle density regions are studied. The traffic flow is more influenced by crossing pedestrians in the low vehicle density region, while in the high vehicle density region, the interactions among vehicles dominate. The main contribution of this paper lies in the qualitative analysis of the impact of the interactions between pedestrians and vehicles on the traffic, its energy economy and emissions.

  20. Cellular automata model for urban road traffic flow considering pedestrian crossing street

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Han-Tao; Yang, Shuo; Chen, Xiao-Xu

    2016-11-01

    In order to analyze the effect of pedestrians' crossing street on vehicle flows, we investigated traffic characteristics of vehicles and pedestrians. Based on that, rules of lane changing, acceleration, deceleration, randomization and update are modified. Then we established two urban two-lane cellular automata models of traffic flow, one of which is about sections with non-signalized crosswalk and the other is on uncontrolled sections with pedestrians crossing street at random. MATLAB is used for numerical simulation of the different traffic conditions; meanwhile space-time diagram and relational graphs of traffic flow parameters are generated and then comparatively analyzed. Simulation results indicate that when vehicle density is lower than around 25 vehs/(km lane), pedestrians have modest impact on traffic flow, whereas when vehicle density is higher than about 60 vehs/(km lane), traffic speed and volume will decrease significantly especially on sections with non-signal-controlled crosswalk. The results illustrate that the proposed models reconstruct the traffic flow's characteristic with the situation where there are pedestrians crossing and can provide some practical reference for urban traffic management.

  1. Far-infrared pedestrian detection for advanced driver assistance systems using scene context

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Guohua; Liu, Qiong; Wu, Qingyao

    2016-04-01

    Pedestrian detection is one of the most critical but challenging components in advanced driver assistance systems. Far-infrared (FIR) images are well-suited for pedestrian detection even in a dark environment. However, most current detection approaches just focus on pedestrian patterns themselves, where robust and real-time detection cannot be well achieved. We propose a fast FIR pedestrian detection approach, called MAP-HOGLBP-T, to explicitly exploit the scene context for the driver assistance system. In MAP-HOGLBP-T, three algorithms are developed to exploit the scene contextual information from roads, vehicles, and background objects of high homogeneity, and we employ the Bayesian approach to build a classifier learner which respects the scene contextual information. We also develop a multiframe approval scheme to enhance the detection performance based on spatiotemporal continuity of pedestrians. Our empirical study on real-world datasets has demonstrated the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed method. The performance is shown to be better than that of state-of-the-art low-level feature-based approaches.

  2. The safety of pedestrian crossing

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Goede, M. de; Groenewoud, C.; Horst, A.R.A. van der

    2010-01-01

    More than half of all severe traffic accidents in which pedestrians or cyclists are involved, occur during road crossing. In this chapter insights, based on previous studies and literature, concerning requirements for safe and comfortable crossing facilities are discussed. In order to develop

  3. An excess of pedestrian injuries in icy conditions

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Merrild, Ulrik; Bak, Soeren

    1983-01-01

    An "icy condition epidemic" has been analyzed in an investigation of patients treated in the casualty department of Odense University Hospital: it was found that the victims were mainly comprised of pedestrians and that the pedestrians had 14 times more injuries than during a normal winter period...... clearing of the snow, and (3) spreading of sand, and possibly salt, on footpaths and bicycle paths. Specific measures should be launched to help the elderly during such periods, in order that outdoor activities may be cut to a minimum....

  4. Estimating the value of life and injury for pedestrians using a stated preference framework.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Niroomand, Naghmeh; Jenkins, Glenn P

    2017-09-01

    The incidence of pedestrian death over the period 2010 to 2014 per 1000,000 in North Cyprus is about 2.5 times that of the EU, with 10.5 times more pedestrian road injuries than deaths. With the prospect of North Cyprus entering the EU, many investments need to be undertaken to improve road safety in order to reach EU benchmarks. We conducted a stated choice experiment to identify the preferences and tradeoffs of pedestrians in North Cyprus for improved walking times, pedestrian costs, and safety. The choice of route was examined using mixed logit models to obtain the marginal utilities associated with each attribute of the routes that consumers chose. These were used to estimate the individuals' willingness to pay (WTP) to save walking time and to avoid pedestrian fatalities and injuries. We then used the results to obtain community-wide estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL) saved, the value of an injury (VI) prevented, and the value per hour of walking time saved. The estimate of the VSL was €699,434 and the estimate of VI was €20,077. These values are consistent, after adjusting for differences in incomes, with the median results of similar studies done for EU countries. The estimated value of time to pedestrians is €7.20 per person hour. The ratio of deaths to injuries is much higher for pedestrians than for road accidents, and this is completely consistent with the higher estimated WTP to avoid a pedestrian accident than to avoid a car accident. The value of time of €7.20 is quite high relative to the wages earned. Findings provide a set of information on the VRR for fatalities and injuries and the value of pedestrian time that is critical for conducing ex ante appraisals of investments to improve pedestrian safety. Copyright © 2017 National Safety Council and Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  5. Pedestrian Falls: A review of the literature and future research directions

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Schepers, JP; Den Brinker, B; Methorst, R; Helbich, M

    Introduction Pedestrian falls (PFs) – falls in public spaces without collisions with other road users – are a significant cause of serious transport-related injuries, amounting to three-quarters of all pedestrians admitted to hospital. Methods This scoping review examined peer-reviewed research on

  6. Pedestrian falls : A review of the literature and future research directions

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Schepers, Paul; den Brinker, Berry; Methorst, Rob; Helbich, Marco

    2017-01-01

    Introduction Pedestrian falls (PFs) – falls in public spaces without collisions with other road users – are a significant cause of serious transport-related injuries, amounting to three-quarters of all pedestrians admitted to hospital. Methods This scoping review examined peer-reviewed research on

  7. Similarities and differences in pedestrian shopping behavior in emerging Chinese metropolises

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Zhu, W.; Wang, Donggen; Timmermans, H.J.P.; Saito, S.

    2007-01-01

    To give a general impression on the fast development of Chinese retailing, this paper reports a study on pedestrian shopping behavior in two city centers, East Nanjing Road and Wang Fujing Street in Shanghai and Beijing. Similarities and differences in pedestrian profiles, activities and movement

  8. Numerical analysis of a pedestrian to car collision: Effect of variations in walk

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Špička J.

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available This work is focused on the modelling of car to pedestrian crash scenario. Virtual hybrid human body model VIRTHUMAN as well as a simplified model of car chassis is modelled under Virtual Performance Solution software. The main idea of the work is the investigation and sensitivity analysis of various initial conditions of the pedestrian during frontal car crash scenario, such as position of the extremities due to different step phases or turning of the pedestrian around his own axis. The experimental data of human gait measurement are used so that one human step is divided into 9 phases to capture the effect of walk when the pedestrian crosses a road. Consequently, the influence of different initial conditions on the kinematics, dynamics of the collision together with injury prediction of pedestrian is discussed. Moreover, the effect of walk is taken into account within translational velocities of the full human body and rotational velocities of the extremities. The trend of the injury prediction for varying initial conditions is monitored. The configurations with zero and non-zero initial velocities are compared with each other, in order to study the effect of walking speed of the pedestrian. Note that only the average walking speed is considered. On the basis of the achieved results, the importance or redundancy of modelling the walking motion and the consideration of different step phases in the car-pedestrian accident can be examined.

  9. Multiscale modeling of pedestrian dynamics

    CERN Document Server

    Cristiani, Emiliano; Tosin, Andrea

    2014-01-01

    This book presents mathematical models and numerical simulations of crowd dynamics. The core topic is the development of a new multiscale paradigm, which bridges the microscopic and macroscopic scales taking the most from each of them for capturing the relevant clues of complexity of crowds. The background idea is indeed that most of the complex trends exhibited by crowds are due to an intrinsic interplay between individual and collective behaviors. The modeling approach promoted in this book pursues actively this intuition and profits from it for designing general mathematical structures susceptible of application also in fields different from the inspiring original one. The book considers also the two most traditional points of view: the microscopic one, in which pedestrians are tracked individually, and the macroscopic one, in which pedestrians are assimilated to a continuum. Selected existing models are critically analyzed. The work is addressed to researchers and graduate students.

  10. Experiential exposure to texting and walking in virtual reality: A randomized trial to reduce distracted pedestrian behavior.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schwebel, David C; McClure, Leslie A; Porter, Bryan E

    2017-05-01

    Distracted pedestrian behavior is a significant public health concern, as research suggests distracted pedestrians have significantly higher risk of injury compared to fully attentive pedestrians. Despite this, efforts to reduce distracted pedestrian behavior are scant. Using a repeated measures experimental research design, we implemented a behavioral intervention to reduce distracted pedestrian behavior in the high-risk environment of an urban college campus and simultaneously monitored behavior on a control urban college campus not exposed to the intervention. We had two primary aims: reduce perceived vulnerability to injury among individual pedestrians and reduce distracted pedestrian behavior in the environment through a change in community-based norms. The hallmark of the behavioral intervention was a week-long opportunity for community members to experience personally the risks of distracted pedestrian behavior by attempting to cross a virtual pedestrian environment street while text-messaging. This was supplemented by traditional and social marketing and publicity through various campus partners. A sample of 219 individuals completed self-report surveys about perceived vulnerability to distracted pedestrian injury before experiencing the distracted virtual street-crossing and again after 2 weeks and 5 months. Observational assessment of distracted pedestrian behavior was conducted at a busy intersection on the campus as well as at a control campus not exposed to the intervention at baseline, post-intervention, 10 weeks, and 6 months. The intervention achieved mixed results. Individuals exposed to texting within a simulated pedestrian environment reported changes in their intentions to cross streets while distracted and in perceived vulnerability to risk while crossing streets, but we did not witness evidence of changed community norms based on observed rates of distracted pedestrian behavior before and after the intervention compared to a control campus not

  11. The flashing right turn signal with pedestrian indication : human factors studies to understand the potential of a new signal to increase awareness of and attention to crossing pedestrians, [summary].

    Science.gov (United States)

    2015-12-01

    The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) has placed a high priority on understanding : the nature of pedestrian injury and fatality incidents and on developing interventions that will : make Floridas roads safer for pedestrians.

  12. Optimal Design of HGV Front Structure for Pedestrian Safety

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ramli, Faiz Redza; Yamazaki, Koetsu

    This paper addresses a pedestrian safety design of front structure of Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) by two concepts; firstly by equipping a lower bumper stiffener structure under the front bumper and secondly by putting an airbag in front of the HGV front panel. In this study, HGV-pedestrian collision accident was simulated by the crash analysis solver MADYMO environment, where the HGV model with the speed of 20 km/h was collided with an adult male and with an adult female pedestrian, respectively. The bumper and lower bumper stiffener were varied their positions, while the airbag was adjusted the vent hole size and the position of airbag in front of front panel vertically. The pedestrian injuries that can be sustained during the simulation impact were limited at the critical body parts of head, chest, upper leg; an injury criteria of Head Injury Criterion (HIC), Thorax Cumulative 3ms Acceleration (C3ms) and peak loads of femur, respectively. Because of various parameters and constraints of initial conditions and injury thresholds, a multi-objective optimization design problem considered these main injury criterion is solved in order to achieve the best solution for this study. The results of optimized design parameters for each cases and conditions were obtained and the possibilities of the proposed concept were discussed.

  13. Pedestrian detection from thermal images: A sparse representation based approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Qi, Bin; John, Vijay; Liu, Zheng; Mita, Seiichi

    2016-05-01

    Pedestrian detection, a key technology in computer vision, plays a paramount role in the applications of advanced driver assistant systems (ADASs) and autonomous vehicles. The objective of pedestrian detection is to identify and locate people in a dynamic environment so that accidents can be avoided. With significant variations introduced by illumination, occlusion, articulated pose, and complex background, pedestrian detection is a challenging task for visual perception. Different from visible images, thermal images are captured and presented with intensity maps based objects' emissivity, and thus have an enhanced spectral range to make human beings perceptible from the cool background. In this study, a sparse representation based approach is proposed for pedestrian detection from thermal images. We first adopted the histogram of sparse code to represent image features and then detect pedestrian with the extracted features in an unimodal and a multimodal framework respectively. In the unimodal framework, two types of dictionaries, i.e. joint dictionary and individual dictionary, are built by learning from prepared training samples. In the multimodal framework, a weighted fusion scheme is proposed to further highlight the contributions from features with higher separability. To validate the proposed approach, experiments were conducted to compare with three widely used features: Haar wavelets (HWs), histogram of oriented gradients (HOG), and histogram of phase congruency (HPC) as well as two classification methods, i.e. AdaBoost and support vector machine (SVM). Experimental results on a publicly available data set demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach.

  14. A thermostatted kinetic theory model for event-driven pedestrian dynamics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bianca, Carlo; Mogno, Caterina

    2018-06-01

    This paper is devoted to the modeling of the pedestrian dynamics by means of the thermostatted kinetic theory. Specifically the microscopic interactions among pedestrians and an external force field are modeled for simulating the evacuation of pedestrians from a metro station. The fundamentals of the stochastic game theory and the thermostatted kinetic theory are coupled for the derivation of a specific mathematical model which depicts the time evolution of the distribution of pedestrians at different exits of a metro station. The perturbation theory is employed in order to establish the stability analysis of the nonequilibrium stationary states in the case of a metro station consisting of two exits. A general sensitivity analysis on the initial conditions, the magnitude of the external force field and the number of exits is presented by means of numerical simulations which, in particular, show how the asymptotic distribution and the convergence time are affected by the presence of an external force field. The results show how, in evacuation conditions, the interaction dynamics among pedestrians can be negligible with respect to the external force. The important role of the thermostat term in allowing the reaching of the nonequilibrium stationary state is stressed out. Research perspectives are underlined at the end of paper, in particular for what concerns the derivation of frameworks that take into account the definition of local external actions and the introduction of the space and velocity dynamics.

  15. Methodology for assessing the lighting of pedestrian crossings based on light intensity parameters

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tomczuk Piotr

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available One of the possible preventive measures that could improve safety at crossings is to assess the state of illumination of the lighting installation located in the transition area for pedestrians. The City of Warsaw has undertaken to comprehensively assess the pedestrian crossings to determine the level of road safety and the condition of lighting. The lighting conditions related to pedestrian crossings without traffic lights in three central districts of the city were investigated. The conducted field research and the work of the team of experts lead to the development of tools to assess the level of risk due to the lighting conditions measured at night. The newly developed and used method of assessment and the experience gained should provide a valuable contribution to the development of uniform risk assessment rules for pedestrian crossings in Poland. The authors of this paper have attempted to systematize the description of the method of evaluation of the lighting installed in the area of pedestrian crossings.

  16. Domain Adaptation for Pedestrian Detection Based on Prediction Consistency

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yu Li-ping

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Pedestrian detection is an active area of research in computer vision. It remains a quite challenging problem in many applications where many factors cause a mismatch between source dataset used to train the pedestrian detector and samples in the target scene. In this paper, we propose a novel domain adaptation model for merging plentiful source domain samples with scared target domain samples to create a scene-specific pedestrian detector that performs as well as rich target domain simples are present. Our approach combines the boosting-based learning algorithm with an entropy-based transferability, which is derived from the prediction consistency with the source classifications, to selectively choose the samples showing positive transferability in source domains to the target domain. Experimental results show that our approach can improve the detection rate, especially with the insufficient labeled data in target scene.

  17. Time-dependent spectral analysis of interactions within groups of walking pedestrians and vertical structural motion using wavelets

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bocian, M.; Brownjohn, J. M. W.; Racic, V.; Hester, D.; Quattrone, A.; Gilbert, L.; Beasley, R.

    2018-05-01

    A multi-scale and multi-object interaction phenomena can arise when a group of walking pedestrians crosses a structure capable of exhibiting dynamic response. This is because each pedestrian is an autonomous dynamic system capable of displaying intricate behaviour affected by social, psychological, biomechanical and environmental factors, including adaptations to the structural motion. Despite a wealth of mathematical models attempting to describe and simulate coupled crowd-structure system, their applicability can generally be considered uncertain. This can be assigned to a number of assumptions made in their development and the scarcity or unavailability of data suitable for their validation, in particular those associated with pedestrian-pedestrian and pedestrian-structure interaction. To alleviate this problem, data on behaviour of individual pedestrians within groups of six walkers with different spatial arrangements are gathered simultaneously with data on dynamic structural response of a footbridge, from a series of measurements utilising wireless motion monitors. Unlike in previous studies on coordination of pedestrian behaviour, the collected data can serve as a proxy for pedestrian vertical force, which is of critical importance from the point of view of structural stability. A bivariate analysis framework is proposed and applied to these data, encompassing wavelet transform, synchronisation measures based on Shannon entropy and circular statistics. A topological pedestrian map is contrived showing the strength and directionality of between-subjects interactions. It is found that the coordination in pedestrians' vertical force depends on the spatial collocation within a group, but it is generally weak. The relationship between the bridge and pedestrian behaviour is also analysed, revealing stronger propensity for pedestrians to coordinate their force with the structural motion rather than with each other.

  18. Aspectos psicosociales y accidentes en el transporte terrestre Psychosocial aspects and accidents in land transport

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nelson Morales-Soto

    2010-06-01

    Full Text Available Los accidentes de tránsito son un problema de salud pública en el Perú, que entre 1998 y 2008 causaron 35 596 muertes, Lima es la región más afectada con 61,7% de los siniestros, su costo anual alcanzó los mil millones de dólares, equivalente a un tercio de la inversión en salud. Los estudios disponibles enfatizan en los protagonistas -conductores, peatones- o en equipos y vías; se han modificado normas e implementado planes de contención de la siniestralidad pero su incidencia persiste. Se plantea la posibilidad de explorar factores conductuales y sociales que podrían tener importancia en la génesis del problema revisando los relacionados con el desorden imperante en el transporte, los comportamientos de conductores y peatones y la permisividad de la sociedad en general, particularmente de la autoridad. Se propone la investigación e intervención multidisciplinaria e intersectorial.Road traffic accidents are a public health problem in Peru, having caused 35 596 deaths in Peru between 1998 and 2008. Lima is the most affected region, presenting 61.7% of the accidents, the annual cost reached one thousand million dollars, equivalent to a third part of the investment in health. Available studies give emphasis to the protagonists -the drivers, the pedestrians- or to equipment and roads; the laws have been modified and containment plans for accidents have been implemented, but the incidence remains the same. We raise the possibility of exploring behavioral and social factors that could be relevant in the genesis of the problem, revising those related to current disorder in transport, the behaviors of drivers and pedestrians and the permissiveness of society in general particularly of the authority. We propose research and a multidisciplinary and intersectoral intervention.

  19. Potential of pedestrian protection systems--a parameter study using finite element models of pedestrian dummy and generic passenger vehicles.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fredriksson, Rikard; Shin, Jaeho; Untaroiu, Costin D

    2011-08-01

    To study the potential of active, passive, and integrated (combined active and passive) safety systems in reducing pedestrian upper body loading in typical impact configurations. Finite element simulations using models of generic sedan car fronts and the Polar II pedestrian dummy were performed for 3 impact configurations at 2 impact speeds. Chest contact force, head injury criterion (HIC(15)), head angular acceleration, and the cumulative strain damage measure (CSDM(0.25)) were employed as injury parameters. Further, 3 countermeasures were modeled: an active autonomous braking system, a passive deployable countermeasure, and an integrated system combining the active and passive systems. The auto-brake system was modeled by reducing impact speed by 10 km/h (equivalent to ideal full braking over 0.3 s) and introducing a pitch of 1 degree and in-crash deceleration of 1 g. The deployable system consisted of a deployable hood, lifting 100 mm in the rear, and a lower windshield air bag. All 3 countermeasures showed benefit in a majority of impact configurations in terms of injury prevention. The auto-brake system reduced chest force in a majority of the configurations and decreased HIC(15), head angular acceleration, and CSDM in all configurations. Averaging all impact configurations, the auto-brake system showed reductions of injury predictors from 20 percent (chest force) to 82 percent (HIC). The passive deployable countermeasure reduced chest force and HIC(15) in a majority of configurations and head angular acceleration and CSDM in all configurations, although the CSDM decrease in 2 configurations was minimal. On average a reduction from 20 percent (CSDM) to 58 percent (HIC) was recorded in the passive deployable countermeasures. Finally, the integrated system evaluated in this study reduced all injury assessment parameters in all configurations compared to the reference situations. The average reductions achieved by the integrated system ranged from 56 percent

  20. Development of Statewide Guidelines for Implementing Leading Pedestrian Intervals in Florida [Summary

    Science.gov (United States)

    2018-02-01

    Pedestrian safety is always a high priority for the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), especially as FDOT moves Florida toward a truly multimodal transportation system. Intersections are where vehicles and pedestrians are most likely to int...

  1. Multilevel models for evaluating the risk of pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions at intersections and mid-blocks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Quistberg, D Alex; Howard, Eric J; Ebel, Beth E; Moudon, Anne V; Saelens, Brian E; Hurvitz, Philip M; Curtin, James E; Rivara, Frederick P

    2015-11-01

    Walking is a popular form of physical activity associated with clear health benefits. Promoting safe walking for pedestrians requires evaluating the risk of pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions at specific roadway locations in order to identify where road improvements and other interventions may be needed. The objective of this analysis was to estimate the risk of pedestrian collisions at intersections and mid-blocks in Seattle, WA. The study used 2007-2013 pedestrian-motor vehicle collision data from police reports and detailed characteristics of the microenvironment and macroenvironment at intersection and mid-block locations. The primary outcome was the number of pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions over time at each location (incident rate ratio [IRR] and 95% confidence interval [95% CI]). Multilevel mixed effects Poisson models accounted for correlation within and between locations and census blocks over time. Analysis accounted for pedestrian and vehicle activity (e.g., residential density and road classification). In the final multivariable model, intersections with 4 segments or 5 or more segments had higher pedestrian collision rates compared to mid-blocks. Non-residential roads had significantly higher rates than residential roads, with principal arterials having the highest collision rate. The pedestrian collision rate was higher by 9% per 10 feet of street width. Locations with traffic signals had twice the collision rate of locations without a signal and those with marked crosswalks also had a higher rate. Locations with a marked crosswalk also had higher risk of collision. Locations with a one-way road or those with signs encouraging motorists to cede the right-of-way to pedestrians had fewer pedestrian collisions. Collision rates were higher in locations that encourage greater pedestrian activity (more bus use, more fast food restaurants, higher employment, residential, and population densities). Locations with higher intersection density had a lower

  2. Radiative accidental matter

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Sierra, D. Aristizabal [IFPA, Dép. AGO, Université de Liège,Bât B5, Sart Tilman B-4000 Liège 1 (Belgium); Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María - Departamento de Física,Casilla 110-V, Avda. España 1680, Valparaíso (Chile); Simoes, C.; Wegman, D. [IFPA, Dép. AGO, Université de Liège,Bât B5, Sart Tilman B-4000 Liège 1 (Belgium)

    2016-07-25

    Accidental matter models are scenarios where the beyond-the-standard model physics preserves all the standard model accidental and approximate symmetries up to a cutoff scale related with lepton number violation. We study such scenarios assuming that the new physics plays an active role in neutrino mass generation, and show that this unavoidably leads to radiatively induced neutrino masses. We systematically classify all possible models and determine their viability by studying electroweak precision data, big bang nucleosynthesis and electroweak perturbativity, finding that the latter places the most stringent constraints on the mass spectra. These results allow the identification of minimal radiative accidental matter models for which perturbativity is lost at high scales. We calculate radiative charged-lepton flavor violating processes in these setups, and show that μ→eγ has a rate well within MEG sensitivity provided the lepton-number violating scale is at or below 5×10{sup 5} GeV, a value (naturally) assured by the radiative suppression mechanism. Sizeable τ→μγ branching fractions within SuperKEKB sensitivity are possible for lower lepton-number breaking scales. We thus point out that these scenarios can be tested not only in direct searches but also in lepton flavor-violating experiments.

  3. Video-processing-based system for automated pedestrian data collection and analysis when crossing the street

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mansouri, Nabila; Watelain, Eric; Ben Jemaa, Yousra; Motamed, Cina

    2018-03-01

    Computer-vision techniques for pedestrian detection and tracking have progressed considerably and become widely used in several applications. However, a quick glance at the literature shows a minimal use of these techniques in pedestrian behavior and safety analysis, which might be due to the technical complexities facing the processing of pedestrian videos. To extract pedestrian trajectories from a video automatically, all road users must be detected and tracked during sequences, which is a challenging task, especially in a congested open-outdoor urban space. A multipedestrian tracker based on an interframe-detection-association process was proposed and evaluated. The tracker results are used to implement an automatic tool for pedestrians data collection when crossing the street based on video processing. The variations in the instantaneous speed allowed the detection of the street crossing phases (approach, waiting, and crossing). These were addressed for the first time in the pedestrian road security analysis to illustrate the causal relationship between pedestrian behaviors in the different phases. A comparison with a manual data collection method, by computing the root mean square error and the Pearson correlation coefficient, confirmed that the procedures proposed have significant potential to automate the data collection process.

  4. The effect of road and environmental characteristics on pedestrian hit-and-run accidents in Ghana.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aidoo, Eric Nimako; Amoh-Gyimah, Richard; Ackaah, Williams

    2013-04-01

    The number of pedestrians who have died as a result of being hit by vehicles has increased in recent years, in addition to vehicle passenger deaths. Many pedestrians who were involved in road traffic accident died as a result of the driver leaving the pedestrian who was struck unattended at the scene of the accident. This paper seeks to determine the effect of road and environmental characteristics on pedestrian hit-and-run accidents in Ghana. Using pedestrian accident data extracted from the National Road Traffic Accident Database at the Building and Road Research Institute (BRRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Ghana, a binary logit model was employed in the analysis. The results from the estimated model indicate that fatal accidents, unclear weather, nighttime conditions, and straight and flat road sections without medians and junctions significantly increase the likelihood that the vehicle driver will leave the scene after hitting a pedestrian. Thus, integrating median separation and speed humps into road design and construction and installing street lights will help to curb the problem of pedestrian hit-and-run accidents in Ghana. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  5. Safety effectiveness of pavement design treatment at intersections: Left turning vehicles and pedestrians on crosswalks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hasina Iasmin

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available Pedestrians are the most vulnerable road users as they are more exposed than other road users. Pedestrian safety at road intersections still remains the most vital and yet unsolved issue. One of the critical points in pedestrian safety is the occurrence of accidents between left-turning vehicle and pedestrians on crosswalks at signalized intersections. A crosswalk is a place designated for pedestrians and cyclists to cross vehicular roads safely. Drivers are expected to give priority to pedestrians or cyclists during interactions between them on the crosswalk. If a driver exhibits non-yielding behavior, the interaction will turn into a collision. This study examined the safety effect of three crosswalks designed with different materials such as red-colored material or brick pavement based on a safety performance study. The safety performance study considered left-turning driver's gap acceptance behavior and the severity of traffic conflict events between left-turning vehicles and pedestrians. The results of the study indicates that using brick pavement on a crosswalk increases the safety level of the crosswalk. Drivers at such crosswalks are more acquiescent to the priority rule.

  6. Public open spaces and walking for recreation: moderation by attributes of pedestrian environments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sugiyama, Takemi; Paquet, Catherine; Howard, Natasha J; Coffee, Neil T; Taylor, Anne W; Adams, Robert J; Daniel, Mark

    2014-05-01

    This study examined whether attributes of pedestrian environments moderate the relationships between access to public open spaces (POS) and adults' recreational walking. Data were collected from participants of the North West Adelaide Health Study in 2007. Recreational walking was determined using self-reported walking frequency. Measures of POS access (presence, count, and distance to the nearest POS) were assessed using a Geographic Information System. Pedestrian environmental attributes included aesthetics, walking infrastructure, barrier/traffic, crime concern, intersection density, and access to walking trails. Regression analyses examined whether associations between POS access and recreational walking were moderated by pedestrian environmental attributes. The sample included 1574 participants (45% men, mean age: 55). POS access measures were not associated with recreational walking. However, aesthetics, walking infrastructure, and access to walking trail were found to moderate the POS-walking relationships. The presence of POS was associated with walking among participants with aesthetically pleasing pedestrian environments. Counter-intuitively, better access to POS was associated with recreational walking for those with poorer walking infrastructure or no access to walking trails. Local pedestrian environments moderate the relationships between access to POS and recreational walking. Our findings suggest the presence of complex relationships between POS availability and pedestrian environments. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. Expanding pedestrian injury risk to the body region level: how to model passive safety systems in pedestrian injury risk functions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Niebuhr, Tobias; Junge, Mirko; Achmus, Stefanie

    2015-01-01

    Assessment of the effectiveness of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) plays a crucial role in accident research. A common way to evaluate the effectiveness of new systems is to determine the potentials for injury severity reduction. Because injury risk functions describe the probability of an injury of a given severity conditional on a technical accident severity (closing speed, delta V, barrier equivalent speed, etc.), they are predestined for such evaluations. Recent work has stated an approach on how to model the pedestrian injury risk in pedestrian-to-passenger car accidents as a family of functions. This approach gave explicit and easily interpretable formulae for the injury risk conditional on the closing speed of the car. These results are extended to injury risk functions for pedestrian body regions. Starting with a double-checked German In-depth Accident Study (GIDAS) pedestrian-to-car accident data set (N = 444) and a functional-anatomical definition of the body regions, investigations on the influence of specific body regions on the overall injury severity will be presented. As the measure of injury severity, the ISSx, a rescaled version of the well-known Injury Severity Score (ISS), was used. Though traditional ISS is computed by summation of the squares of the 3 most severe injured body regions, ISSx is computed by the summation of the exponentials of the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) severities of the 3 most severely injured body regions. The exponentials used are scaled to fit the ISS range of values between 0 and 75. Three body regions (head/face/neck, thorax, hip/legs) clearly dominated abdominal and upper extremity injuries; that is, the latter 2 body regions had no influence at all on the overall injury risk over the range of technical accident severities. Thus, the ISSx is well described by use of the injury codes from the same body regions for any pedestrian injury severity. As a mathematical consequence, the ISSx becomes explicitly

  8. Two-Stage Part-Based Pedestrian Detection

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Møgelmose, Andreas; Prioletti, Antonio; Trivedi, Mohan M.

    2012-01-01

    Detecting pedestrians is still a challenging task for automotive vision system due the extreme variability of targets, lighting conditions, occlusions, and high speed vehicle motion. A lot of research has been focused on this problem in the last 10 years and detectors based on classifiers has...... gained a special place among the different approaches presented. This work presents a state-of-the-art pedestrian detection system based on a two stages classifier. Candidates are extracted with a Haar cascade classifier trained with the DaimlerDB dataset and then validated through part-based HOG...... of several metrics, such as detection rate, false positives per hour, and frame rate. The novelty of this system rely in the combination of HOG part-based approach, tracking based on specific optimized feature and porting on a real prototype....

  9. [THREE CASES OF ACCIDENTAL AUTO-INJECTION OF ADRENALINE].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yanagida, Noriyuki; Iikura, Katsuhito; Ogura, Kiyotake; Wang, Ling-jen; Asaumi, Tomoyuki; Sato, Sakura; Ebisawa, Motohiro

    2015-12-01

    Reports on accidental auto-injection of adrenaline are few. We encountered three cases of accidental injection of adrenaline. In this study, we have examined and reported the clinical courses and symptoms of our cases. CASE 1 involved a female physician in her 50s who had attended an explanatory meeting on auto-injection of adrenaline. She mistook EpiPen® to be the EpiPen trainer and accidentally injected herself with 0.3 mg EpiPen®. Her systolic/diastolic pressure peaked at 7 min to reach 144/78 mmHg and decreased to 120/77 mmHg at 14 min. Except for palpitation after 7 min, the only subjective symptom was local pain at the injection site. CASE 2 was noted in a 6-year-old boy. He accidentally pierced his right forefinger with 0.15 mg EpiPen®, and after 20 min, his right forefinger was swollen. The swelling improved 80 min after the accidental injection. CASE 3 was noted in a 4-year-old girl. She accidentally injected herself with 0.15 mg EpiPen®. Her systolic/diastolic pressure peaked at 23 min to reach 123/70 mmHg and decreased to 96/86 mmHg at 28 min. Severe adverse effects of accidental auto-injection of adrenaline were not observed in these three cases. Our findings suggest that while handling adrenaline auto-injectors, we should keep in mind the possibility of accidental injection.

  10. Recognizing pedestrian's unsafe behaviors in far-infrared imagery at night

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Eun Ju; Ko, Byoung Chul; Nam, Jae-Yeal

    2016-05-01

    Pedestrian behavior recognition is important work for early accident prevention in advanced driver assistance system (ADAS). In particular, because most pedestrian-vehicle crashes are occurred from late of night to early of dawn, our study focus on recognizing unsafe behavior of pedestrians using thermal image captured from moving vehicle at night. For recognizing unsafe behavior, this study uses convolutional neural network (CNN) which shows high quality of recognition performance. However, because traditional CNN requires the very expensive training time and memory, we design the light CNN consisted of two convolutional layers and two subsampling layers for real-time processing of vehicle applications. In addition, we combine light CNN with boosted random forest (Boosted RF) classifier so that the output of CNN is not fully connected with the classifier but randomly connected with Boosted random forest. We named this CNN as randomly connected CNN (RC-CNN). The proposed method was successfully applied to the pedestrian unsafe behavior (PUB) dataset captured from far-infrared camera at night and its behavior recognition accuracy is confirmed to be higher than that of some algorithms related to CNNs, with a shorter processing time.

  11. Design Issues for MEMS-Based Pedestrian Inertial Navigation Systems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    P. S. Marinushkin

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper describes design issues for MEMS-based pedestrian inertial navigation systems. By now the algorithms to estimate navigation parameters for strap-down inertial navigation systems on the basis of plural observations have been already well developed. At the same time mathematical and software processing of information in the case of pedestrian inertial navigation systems has its specificity, due to the peculiarities of their functioning and exploitation. Therefore, there is an urgent task to enhance existing fusion algorithms for use in pedestrian navigation systems. For this purpose the article analyzes the characteristics of the hardware composition and configuration of existing systems of this class. The paper shows advantages of various technical solutions. Relying on their main features it justifies a choice of the navigation system architecture and hardware composition enabling improvement of the estimation accuracy of user position as compared to the systems using only inertial sensors. The next point concerns the development of algorithms for complex processing of heterogeneous information. To increase an accuracy of the free running pedestrian inertial navigation system we propose an adaptive algorithm for joint processing of heterogeneous information based on the fusion of inertial info rmation with magnetometer measurements using EKF approach. Modeling of the algorithm was carried out using a specially developed functional prototype of pedestrian inertial navigation system, implemented as a hardware/software complex in Matlab environment. The functional prototype tests of the developed system demonstrated an improvement of the navigation parameters estimation compared to the systems based on inertial sensors only. It enables to draw a conclusion that the synthesized algorithm provides satisfactory accuracy for calculating the trajectory of motion even when using low-grade inertial MEMS sensors. The developed algorithm can be

  12. Pedestrian hybrid beacon crosswalk system (PHB) or high-intensity activated crosswalk (HAWK).

    Science.gov (United States)

    2014-11-01

    The Pedestrian Hybrid Beacon Crosswalk (PHB) is a type of traffic control system, used to aid : pedestrians safely crossing the street and to regulate traffic flow. This study examines the : success of the first PHB installed in the state of Vermont....

  13. The effects of acute sleep restriction on adolescents' pedestrian safety in a virtual environment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Davis, Aaron L; Avis, Kristin T; Schwebel, David C

    2013-12-01

    Over 8,000 American adolescents ages 14-15 years require medical attention owing to pedestrian injury annually. Cognitive factors contributing to pedestrian safety include reaction time, impulsivity, risk taking, attention, and decision making. These characteristics are also influenced by sleep restriction. Experts recommend that adolescents obtain 8.5 hours of uninterrupted sleep each night, but most American adolescents do not. Inadequate sleep may place adolescents at risk for pedestrian injury. Using a within-subjects design, 55 14- and 15-year-olds engaged in a virtual reality pedestrian environment under two conditions, scheduled a week apart: sleep-restricted (4 hours' sleep the previous night) and adequate sleep (8.5 hours). Sleep was assessed using actigraphy and pedestrian behavior via four outcome measures: time to initiate crossing, time before contact with vehicle while crossing, virtual hits or close calls and attention to traffic (looks left and right). While acutely sleep restricted, adolescents took more time to initiate pedestrian crossings, crossed with less time before contact with vehicles, experienced more virtual hits or close calls, and looked left and right more often compared with when adequately rested. Results were maintained after controlling for age, gender, ethnicity, and average total sleep duration before each condition. Adolescent pedestrian behavior in the simulated virtual environment was markedly different, and generally more risky, when acutely sleep restricted compared with adequately rested. Inadequate sleep may influence cognitive functioning to the extent that pedestrian safety is jeopardized among adolescents capable of crossing streets safely when rested. Policy decisions might be educated by these results. Copyright © 2013 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  14. Preferences and behaviour of pedestrians and cyclists by age and gender

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bernhoft, Inger Marie; Carstensen, Gitte

    2008-01-01

    significantly more than the younger respondents do. To a larger extent they feel that it is dangerous to cross the road where these facilities are missing. The older pedestrians also find the presence of a pavement very important on their route whereas the younger pedestrians more often focus on a fast passage...

  15. Accidental hypothermia-an update

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Paal, Peter; Gordon, Les; Strapazzon, Giacomo

    2016-01-01

    BACKGROUND: This paper provides an up-to-date review of the management and outcome of accidental hypothermia patients with and without cardiac arrest. METHODS: The authors reviewed the relevant literature in their specialist field. Summaries were merged, discussed and approved to produce this nar......BACKGROUND: This paper provides an up-to-date review of the management and outcome of accidental hypothermia patients with and without cardiac arrest. METHODS: The authors reviewed the relevant literature in their specialist field. Summaries were merged, discussed and approved to produce...... this narrative review. RESULTS: The hospital use of minimally-invasive rewarming for non-arrested, otherwise healthy, patients with primary hypothermia and stable vital signs has the potential to substantially decrease morbidity and mortality for these patients. Extracorporeal life support (ECLS) has...... and post-resuscitation care. CONCLUSIONS: Based on new evidence, additional clinical experience and clearer management guidelines and documentation, the treatment of accidental hypothermia has been refined. ECLS has substantially improved survival and is the treatment of choice in the patient with unstable...

  16. Issues and challenges for pedestrian active safety systems based on real world accidents.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hamdane, Hédi; Serre, Thierry; Masson, Catherine; Anderson, Robert

    2015-09-01

    The purpose of this study was to analyze real crashes involving pedestrians in order to evaluate the potential effectiveness of autonomous emergency braking systems (AEB) in pedestrian protection. A sample of 100 real accident cases were reconstructed providing a comprehensive set of data describing the interaction between the vehicle, the environment and the pedestrian all along the scenario of the accident. A generic AEB system based on a camera sensor for pedestrian detection was modeled in order to identify the functionality of its different attributes in the timeline of each crash scenario. These attributes were assessed to determine their impact on pedestrian safety. The influence of the detection and the activation of the AEB system were explored by varying the field of view (FOV) of the sensor and the level of deceleration. A FOV of 35° was estimated to be required to detect and react to the majority of crash scenarios. For the reaction of a system (from hazard detection to triggering the brakes), between 0.5 and 1s appears necessary. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  17. Impact of improving vehicle front design on the burden of pedestrian injuries in Germany, the United States, and India.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moran, Dane; Bose, Dipan; Bhalla, Kavi

    2017-11-17

    European car design regulations and New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) ratings have led to reductions in pedestrian injuries. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of improving vehicle front design on mortality and morbidity due to pedestrian injuries in a European country (Germany) and 2 countries (the United States and India) that do not have pedestrian-focused NCAP testing or design regulations. We used data from the International Road Traffic and Accident Database and the Global Burden of Disease project to estimate baseline pedestrian deaths and nonfatal injuries in each country in 2013. The effect of improved passenger car star ratings on probability of pedestrian injury was based on recent evaluations of pedestrian crash data from Germany. The effect of improved heavy motor vehicle (HMV) front end design on pedestrian injuries was based on estimates reported by simulation studies. We used burden of disease methods to estimate population health loss by combining the burden of morbidity and mortality in disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost. Extrapolating from evaluations in Germany suggests that improving front end design of cars can potentially reduce the burden of pedestrian injuries due to cars by up to 24% in the United States and 41% in India. In Germany, where cars comply with the United Nations regulation on pedestrian safety, additional improvements would have led to a 1% reduction. Similarly, improved HMV design would reduce DALYs lost by pedestrian victims hit by HMVs by 20% in each country. Overall, improved vehicle design would reduce DALYs lost to road traffic injuries (RTIs) by 0.8% in Germany, 4.1% in the United States, and 6.7% in India. Recent evaluations show a strong correlation between Euro NCAP pedestrian scores and real-life pedestrian injuries, suggesting that improved car front end design in Europe has led to substantial reductions in pedestrian injuries. Although the United States has fewer pedestrian crashes, it would

  18. Autonomous pedestrian localization technique using CMOS camera sensors

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chun, Chanwoo

    2014-09-01

    We present a pedestrian localization technique that does not need infrastructure. The proposed angle-only measurement method needs specially manufactured shoes. Each shoe has two CMOS cameras and two markers such as LEDs attached on the inward side. The line of sight (LOS) angles towards the two markers on the forward shoe are measured using the two cameras on the other rear shoe. Our simulation results shows that a pedestrian walking down in a shopping mall wearing this device can be accurately guided to the front of a destination store located 100m away, if the floor plan of the mall is available.

  19. Investigating the Applicability of Upstream Detection Strategy at Pedestrian Signalised Crossings

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sitti A Hassan

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available In the UK, the Puffin crossing has provision to extend pedestrian green time for those who take longer to cross. However, even at such a pedestrian friendly facility, the traffic signal control is usually designed to minimise vehicle delay while providing the crossing facility. This situation is rather contrary to the current policies to encourage walking. It is this inequity that has prompted the need to re-examine the traffic control of signalised crossings to provide more benefit to both pedestrians and vehicles. In this context, this paper explores the possibility of implementing an Upstream Detection strategy at a Puffin crossing to provide a user friendly crossing. The study has been carried out by simulating a mid-block Puffin crossing for various detector distances and a number of combinations of pedestrian and traffic flows. This paper presents the simulation results and recommends the situations at which Upstream Detection would be suitable.

  20. Literature review on the preschool pedestrian

    Science.gov (United States)

    1985-01-01

    The purpose of this literature review was to describe (1) the factors leading to typical preschool pedestrian accidents, (2) the developmental characteristics of the preschool child that affect his/her behavior in traffic, (3) social factors that may...

  1. Evaluation of alternative pedestrian control devices.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2012-03-01

    A literature review, field study of Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacon (RRFB) installations in Oregon, and a static survey : on the sequencing of the Pedestrian Hybrid Beacon (PHB) were completed. : The field study conducted in this project was design...

  2. Using smartphone technology to deliver a virtual pedestrian environment: usability and validation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schwebel, David C; Severson, Joan; He, Yefei

    2017-09-01

    Various programs effectively teach children to cross streets more safely, but all are labor- and cost-intensive. Recent developments in mobile phone technology offer opportunity to deliver virtual reality pedestrian environments to mobile smartphone platforms. Such an environment may offer a cost- and labor-effective strategy to teach children to cross streets safely. This study evaluated usability, feasibility, and validity of a smartphone-based virtual pedestrian environment. A total of 68 adults completed 12 virtual crossings within each of two virtual pedestrian environments, one delivered by smartphone and the other a semi-immersive kiosk virtual environment. Participants completed self-report measures of perceived realism and simulator sickness experienced in each virtual environment, plus self-reported demographic and personality characteristics. All participants followed system instructions and used the smartphone-based virtual environment without difficulty. No significant simulator sickness was reported or observed. Users rated the smartphone virtual environment as highly realistic. Convergent validity was detected, with many aspects of pedestrian behavior in the smartphone-based virtual environment matching behavior in the kiosk virtual environment. Anticipated correlations between personality and kiosk virtual reality pedestrian behavior emerged for the smartphone-based system. A smartphone-based virtual environment can be usable and valid. Future research should develop and evaluate such a training system.

  3. Red light crossing, transportation time and attitudes in crossing with intelligent green light for pedestrians

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Øhlenschlæger, Rasmus; Tønning, Charlotte; Andersen, Camilla Sloth

    2018-01-01

    In order to increase mobility and promote modal shift to walking, intersections in the city of Aarhus, Denmark, have been equipped with intelligent management of green light for pedestrians. This allows adjustment of green time based on radar detection of pedestrians in the crossing...... and prolongation of the green time for the pedestrians if required. The effect is examined in a before/after study of a two-stage pedestrian crossing with a centre refuge island in an intersection of four-lane roads. The data consists of responses from an on-site questionnaire including 72+53 individuals and 266...

  4. INFLUENCE OF PLANNING, ORGANIZATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND REGULATION ON ROAD TRAFFIC SAFETY OF PEDESTRIANS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    G. M. Kuharenok

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper presents results of research on planning, organizational characteristics and regulation modes at  the regulated pedestrian crossings, located out of crossroads in the street and road network of Minsk. Some regularities pertaining to the influence of the investigated characteristics on road traffic safety of pedestrians are revealed in the paper. Practical offers on increase of road traffic safety of pedestrians in the Republic of Belarus have been developed on the basis of the executed investigations and cited in the paper. 

  5. Effective environmental factors on geographical distribution of traffic accidents on pedestrians, downtown Tehran city.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moradi, Ali; Soori, Hamid; Kavousi, Amir; Eshghabadi, Farshid; Nematollahi, Shahrzad; Zeini, Salahdien

    2017-01-01

    In most countries, occurrence of traffic causalities is high in pedestrians. The aim of this study is to geographically analyze the traffic casualties in pedestrians in downtown Tehran city. The study population consisted of traffic injury accidents in pedestrians occurred during 2015 in Tehran city. Data were extracted from offices of traffic police and municipality. For analysis of environmental factors and site of accidents, ordinary least square regression models and geographically weighted regression were used. Fitness and performance of models were checked using the Akaike information criteria, Bayesian information criteria, deviance, and adjusted R 2 . Totally, 514 accidents were included in this study. Of them, site of accidents was arterial streets in 370 (71.9%) cases, collector streets in 133 cases (25.2%), and highways in 11 cases (2.1%). Geographical units of traffic accidents in pedestrians had statistically significant relationship with a number of bus stations, number of crossroads, and recreational areas. Distribution of injury traffic accidents in pedestrians is different in downtown Tehran city. Neighborhoods close to markets are considered as most dangerous neighborhoods for injury traffic accidents. Different environmental factors are involved in determining the distribution of these accidents. The health of pedestrians in Tehran city can be improved by proper traffic management, control of environmental factors, and educational programs.

  6. Cooper Drive pedestrian study : final report.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2006-07-01

    The purpose of this report is to summarize the findings of the pedestrian study conducted for Cooper Drive from Nicholasville Road to Sports Center Drive on the University of Kentucky Campus in Lexington, KY. This study was initiated by the Universit...

  7. Explaining reduction of pedestrian-motor vehicle crashes in Arkhangelsk, Russia, in 2005-2010.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kudryavtsev, Alexander V; Nilssen, Odd; Lund, Johan; Grjibovski, Andrej M; Ytterstad, Børge

    2012-01-01

    To explain a reduction in pedestrian-motor vehicle crashes in Arkhangelsk, Russia, in 2005-2010. Retrospective ecological study. For 2005-2010, police data on pedestrian-motor vehicle crashes, traffic violations, and total motor vehicles (MVs) were combined with data on changes in national road traffic legislation and municipal road infrastructure. Negative binomial regression was used to investigate trends in monthly rates of pedestrian-motor vehicle crashes per total MVs and estimate changes in these rates per unit changes in the safety measures. During the 6 years, the police registered 2,565 pedestrian-motor vehicle crashes: 1,597 (62%) outside crosswalks, 766 (30%) on non-signalized crosswalks, and 202 (8%) on signalized crosswalks. Crash rates outside crosswalks and on signalized crosswalks decreased on average by 1.1% per month, whereas the crash rate on non-signalized crosswalks remained unchanged. Numbers of signalized and non-signalized crosswalks increased by 14 and 19%, respectively. Also, 10% of non-signalized crosswalks were combined with speed humps, and 4% with light-reflecting vertical signs. Pedestrian penalties for traffic violations increased 4-fold. Driver penalties for ignoring prohibiting signal and failure to give way to pedestrian on non-signalized crosswalk increased 7- and 8-fold, respectively. The rate of total registered drivers' traffic violations per total MVs decreased on average by 0.3% per month. All studied infrastructure and legislative measures had inverse associations with the rate of crashes outside crosswalks. The rate of crashes on signalized crosswalks showed inverse associations with related monetary penalties. The introduction of infrastructure and legislative measures is the most probable explanation of the reduction of pedestrian-motor vehicle crashes in Arkhangelsk. The overall reduction is due to decreases in rates of crashes outside crosswalks and on signalized crosswalks. No change was observed in the rate of

  8. Analysis of pedestrian accident costs in Sudan using the willingness-to-pay method.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mofadal, Adam I A; Kanitpong, Kunnawee; Jiwattanakulpaisarn, Piyapong

    2015-05-01

    The willingness-to-pay (WTP) with contingent valuation (CV) method has been proven to be a valid tool for the valuation of non-market goods or socio-economic costs of road traffic accidents among communities in developed and developing countries. Research on accident costing tends to estimate the value of statistical life (VOSL) for all road users by providing a principle for the evaluation of road safety interventions in cost-benefit analysis. As in many other developing countries, the economic loss of traffic accidents in Sudan is noticeable; however, analytical research to estimate the magnitude and impact of that loss is lacking. Reports have shown that pedestrians account for more than 40% of the total number of fatalities. In this study, the WTP-CV approach was used to determine the amount of money that pedestrians in Sudan are willing to pay to reduce the risk of their own death. The impact of the socioeconomic factors, risk levels, and walking behaviors of pedestrians on their WTP for fatality risk reduction was also evaluated. Data were collected from two cities-Khartoum and Nyala-using a survey questionnaire that included 1400 respondents. The WTP-CV Payment Card Questionnaire was designed to ensure that Sudan pedestrians can easily determine the amount of money that would be required to reduce the fatality risk from a pedestrian-related accident. The analysis results show that the estimated VOSL for Sudanese pedestrians ranges from US$0.019 to US$0.101 million. In addition, the willingness-to-pay by Sudanese pedestrians to reduce their fatality risk tends to increase with age, household income, educational level, safety perception, and average time spent on social activities with family and community. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. A cell-based study on pedestrian acceleration and overtaking in a transfer station corridor

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ji, Xiangfeng; Zhou, Xuemei; Ran, Bin

    2013-04-01

    Pedestrian speed in a transfer station corridor is faster than usual and sometimes running can be found among some of them. In this paper, pedestrians are divided into two categories. The first one is aggressive, and the other is conservative. Aggressive pedestrians weaving their way through crowd in the corridor are the study object of this paper. During recent decades, much attention has been paid to the pedestrians' behavior, such as overtaking (also deceleration) and collision avoidance, and that continues in this paper. After sufficiently analyzing the characteristics of pedestrian flow in transfer station corridor, a cell-based model is presented in this paper, including the acceleration (also deceleration) and overtaking analysis. Acceleration (also deceleration) in a corridor is fixed according to Newton's Law and then speed calculated with a kinematic formula is discretized into cells based on the fuzzy logic. After the speed is updated, overtaking is analyzed based on updated speed and force explicitly, compared to rule-based models, which herein we call implicit ones. During the analysis of overtaking, a threshold value to determine the overtaking direction is introduced. Actually, model in this paper is a two-step one. The first step is to update speed, which is the cells the pedestrian can move in one time interval and the other is to analyze the overtaking. Finally, a comparison between the rule-based cellular automata, the model in this paper and data in HCM 2000 is made to demonstrate our model can be used to achieve reasonable simulation of acceleration (also deceleration) and overtaking among pedestrians.

  10. Systematic review and meta-analysis of behavioral interventions to improve child pedestrian safety.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schwebel, David C; Barton, Benjamin K; Shen, Jiabin; Wells, Hayley L; Bogar, Ashley; Heath, Gretchen; McCullough, David

    2014-09-01

    Pedestrian injuries represent a pediatric public health challenge. This systematic review/meta-analysis evaluated behavioral interventions to teach children pedestrian safety. Multiple strategies derived eligible manuscripts (published before April 1, 2013, randomized design, evaluated behavioral child pedestrian safety interventions). Screening 1,951 abstracts yielded 125 full-text retrievals. 25 were retained for data extraction, and 6 were later omitted due to insufficient data. In all, 19 articles reporting 25 studies were included. Risk of bias and quality of evidence were assessed. Behavioral interventions generally improve children's pedestrian safety, both immediately after training and at follow-up several months later. Quality of the evidence was low to moderate. Available evidence suggested interventions targeting dash-out prevention, crossing at parked cars, and selecting safe routes across intersections were effective. Individualized/small-group training for children was the most effective training strategy based on available evidence. Behaviorally based interventions improve children's pedestrian safety. Efforts should continue to develop creative, cost-efficient, and effective interventions. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Pediatric Psychology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  11. Effects of street canyon design on pedestrian thermal comfort in the hot-humid area of China.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Yufeng; Du, Xiaohan; Shi, Yurong

    2017-08-01

    The design characteristics of street canyons were investigated in Guangzhou in the hot-humid area of China, and the effects of the design factors and their interactions on pedestrian thermal comfort were studied by numerical simulations. The ENVI-met V4.0 (BASIC) model was validated by field observations and used to simulate the micrometeorological conditions and the standard effective temperature (SET) at pedestrian level of the street canyons for a typical summer day of Guangzhou. The results show that the micrometeorological parameters of mean radiant temperature (MRT) and wind speed play key roles in pedestrian thermal comfort. Street orientation has the largest contribution on SET at pedestrian level, followed by aspect ratio and greenery, while surface albedo and interactions between factors have small contributions. The street canyons oriented southeast-northwest or with a higher aspect ratio provide more shade, higher wind speed, and better thermal comfort conditions for pedestrians. Compared with the east-west-oriented street canyons, the north-south-oriented street canyons have higher MRTs and worse pedestrian thermal comfort due to their wider building spacing along the street. The effects of greenery change with the road width and the time of the day. Street canyon design is recommended to improve pedestrian thermal comfort. This study provides a better understanding of the effects of street canyon design on pedestrian thermal comfort and is a useful guide on urban design for the hot-humid area of China.

  12. Modeling pedestrian crossing speed profiles considering speed change behavior for the safety assessment of signalized intersections.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Iryo-Asano, Miho; Alhajyaseen, Wael K M

    2017-11-01

    Pedestrian safety is one of the most challenging issues in road networks. Understanding how pedestrians maneuver across an intersection is the key to applying countermeasures against traffic crashes. It is known that the behaviors of pedestrians at signalized crosswalks are significantly different from those in ordinary walking spaces, and they are highly influenced by signal indication, potential conflicts with vehicles, and intersection geometries. One of the most important characteristics of pedestrian behavior at crosswalks is the possible sudden speed change while crossing. Such sudden behavioral change may not be expected by conflicting vehicles, which may lead to hazardous situations. This study aims to quantitatively model the sudden speed changes of pedestrians as they cross signalized crosswalks under uncongested conditions. Pedestrian speed profiles are collected from empirical data and speed change events are extracted assuming that the speed profiles are stepwise functions. The occurrence of speed change events is described by a discrete choice model as a function of the necessary walking speed to complete crossing before the red interval ends, current speed, and the presence of turning vehicles in the conflict area. The amount of speed change before and after the event is modeled using regression analysis. A Monte Carlo simulation is applied for the entire speed profile of the pedestrians. The results show that the model can represent the pedestrian travel time distribution more accurately than the constant speed model. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  13. Effect of Aspiration and Mean Gain on the Emergence of Cooperation in Unidirectional Pedestrian Flow

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wang Zi-Yang; Zhao Hui; Ma Jian; Qin Yong; Jia Li-Min; Zhu Wei

    2013-01-01

    When more than one pedestrian want to move to the same site, conflicts appear and thus the involved pedestrians play a motion game. In order to describe the emergence of cooperation during the conflict resolving process, an evolutionary cellular automation model is established considering the effect of aspiration and mean gain. In each game, pedestrian may be gentle cooperator or aggressive defector. We propose a set of win-stay-lose-shrift (WSLS) like rules for updating pedestrian's strategy. These rules prescribe that if the mean gain of current strategy between some given steps is larger than aspiration the strategy keeps, otherwise the strategy changes. The simulation results show that a high level aspiration will lead to more cooperation. With the increment of the statistic length, pedestrians will be more rational in decision making. It is also found that when the aspiration level is small enough and the statistic length is large enough all the pedestrian will turn to defectors. We use the prisoner's dilemma model to explain it. At last we discuss the effect of aspiration on fundamental diagram. (interdisciplinary physics and related areas of science and technology)

  14. Pedestrians' estimates of their own nighttime conspicuity are unaffected by severe reductions in headlight illumination.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Whetsel Borzendowski, Stephanie A; Rosenberg, Rachel L; Sewall, Ashley Stafford; Tyrrell, Richard A

    2013-12-01

    At night pedestrians tend to overestimate their conspicuity to oncoming drivers, but little is known about factors affecting pedestrians' conspicuity estimates. This study examines how headlamp intensity and pedestrians' clothing influence judgments of their own conspicuity. Forty-eight undergraduate students estimated their own conspicuity on an unilluminated closed road by walking in front of a stationary vehicle to the point at which they judged that they were just recognizable to the driver. Unknown to the participants, high beam intensity was manipulated between subjects by placing neutral density filters on the headlamps. Estimated conspicuity distances did not significantly vary with changes in headlamp intensity even when only 3% of the illumination from the headlamps was present. These findings underscore the need to educate pedestrians about the visual challenges that drivers face at night and the need to minimize pedestrians' exposure to traffic flow at night. © 2013.

  15. Pedestrian simulation model based on principles of bounded rationality: results of validation tests

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Zhu, W.; Timmermans, H.J.P.; Lo, H.P.; Leung, Stephen C.H.; Tan, Susanna M.L.

    2009-01-01

    Over the years, different modelling approaches to simulating pedestrian movement have been suggested. The majority of pedestrian decision models are based on the concept of utility maximization. To explore alternatives, we developed the heterogeneous heuristic model (HHM), based on principles of

  16. The stepping behavior analysis of pedestrians from different age groups via a single-file experiment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cao, Shuchao; Zhang, Jun; Song, Weiguo; Shi, Chang'an; Zhang, Ruifang

    2018-03-01

    The stepping behavior of pedestrians with different age compositions in single-file experiment is investigated in this paper. The relation between step length, step width and stepping time are analyzed by using the step measurement method based on the calculation of curvature of the trajectory. The relations of velocity-step width, velocity-step length and velocity-stepping time for different age groups are discussed and compared with previous studies. Finally effects of pedestrian gender and height on stepping laws and fundamental diagrams are analyzed. The study is helpful for understanding pedestrian dynamics of movement. Meanwhile, it offers experimental data to develop a microscopic model of pedestrian movement by considering stepping behavior.

  17. ANALYSIS OF SPATIO-TEMPORAL TRAFFIC PATTERNS BASED ON PEDESTRIAN TRAJECTORIES

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    S. Busch

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available For driver assistance and autonomous driving systems, it is essential to predict the behaviour of other traffic participants. Usually, standard filter approaches are used to this end, however, in many cases, these are not sufficient. For example, pedestrians are able to change their speed or direction instantly. Also, there may be not enough observation data to determine the state of an object reliably, e.g. in case of occlusions. In those cases, it is very useful if a prior model exists, which suggests certain outcomes. For example, it is useful to know that pedestrians are usually crossing the road at a certain location and at certain times. This information can then be stored in a map which then can be used as a prior in scene analysis, or in practical terms to reduce the speed of a vehicle in advance in order to minimize critical situations. In this paper, we present an approach to derive such a spatio-temporal map automatically from the observed behaviour of traffic participants in everyday traffic situations. In our experiments, we use one stationary camera to observe a complex junction, where cars, public transportation and pedestrians interact. We concentrate on the pedestrians trajectories to map traffic patterns. In the first step, we extract trajectory segments from the video data. These segments are then clustered in order to derive a spatial model of the scene, in terms of a spatially embedded graph. In the second step, we analyse the temporal patterns of pedestrian movement on this graph. We are able to derive traffic light sequences as well as the timetables of nearby public transportation. To evaluate our approach, we used a 4 hour video sequence. We show that we are able to derive traffic light sequences as well as time tables of nearby public transportation.

  18. Analysis of Spatio-Temporal Traffic Patterns Based on Pedestrian Trajectories

    Science.gov (United States)

    Busch, S.; Schindler, T.; Klinger, T.; Brenner, C.

    2016-06-01

    For driver assistance and autonomous driving systems, it is essential to predict the behaviour of other traffic participants. Usually, standard filter approaches are used to this end, however, in many cases, these are not sufficient. For example, pedestrians are able to change their speed or direction instantly. Also, there may be not enough observation data to determine the state of an object reliably, e.g. in case of occlusions. In those cases, it is very useful if a prior model exists, which suggests certain outcomes. For example, it is useful to know that pedestrians are usually crossing the road at a certain location and at certain times. This information can then be stored in a map which then can be used as a prior in scene analysis, or in practical terms to reduce the speed of a vehicle in advance in order to minimize critical situations. In this paper, we present an approach to derive such a spatio-temporal map automatically from the observed behaviour of traffic participants in everyday traffic situations. In our experiments, we use one stationary camera to observe a complex junction, where cars, public transportation and pedestrians interact. We concentrate on the pedestrians trajectories to map traffic patterns. In the first step, we extract trajectory segments from the video data. These segments are then clustered in order to derive a spatial model of the scene, in terms of a spatially embedded graph. In the second step, we analyse the temporal patterns of pedestrian movement on this graph. We are able to derive traffic light sequences as well as the timetables of nearby public transportation. To evaluate our approach, we used a 4 hour video sequence. We show that we are able to derive traffic light sequences as well as time tables of nearby public transportation.

  19. Monocular pedestrian detection: Survey and experiments

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Enzweiler, M.; Gavrila, D.M.

    2009-01-01

    Pedestrian detection is a rapidly evolving area in computer vision with key applications in intelligent vehicles, surveillance, and advanced robotics. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the current state of the art from both methodological and experimental perspectives. The

  20. The Killing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Agger, Gunhild

    2013-01-01

    This article tracks the uncanny locations of The Killing (2007–2012), relating them to place, space and atmosphere, putting bits and pieces from the topographic puzzle together with cues from the symbolic space in order to see how they fit into the overall pattern of Nordic Noir. In The Killing......, the abstract level of space and atmosphere meets the concrete level of place, both influencing the notion of location. This meeting, I suggest, has contributed towards the simultaneous domestic and international appeal of The Killing....

  1. Accidental childhood poisoning in Benin City: Still a problem ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Accidental poisoning (AP) is a leading cause of ill – health and deaths among. Nigerian children. Reports on AP are infrequent in Nigeria. This retrospective descriptive study examined the prevailing pattern of accidental childhood poisoning in Benin City. Accidental poisonings were identified in 226 (3.3%) of the cases ...

  2. Flow of pedestrians through narrow doors with different competitiveness

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Garcimartín, A; Pastor, J M; Zuriguel, I; Parisi, D R; Martín-Gómez, C

    2016-01-01

    We report a thorough analysis of the intermittent flow of pedestrians through a narrow door. The observations include five different sets of evacuation drills with which we have investigated the effect of door size and competitiveness on the flow dynamics. Although the outcomes are in general compatible with the existence of the faster-is-slower effect, the temporal evolution of the instantaneous flow rate provides evidence of new features. These stress the crucial role of the number of people performing the tests, which has an influence on the obtained results. Once the transients at the beginning and end of the evacuation are removed, we have found that the time lapses between the passage of two consecutive pedestrians display heavy-tailed distributions in all the scenarios studied. Meanwhile, the distribution of burst sizes decays exponentially; this can be linked to a constant probability of finding a long-lasting clog during the evacuation process. Based on these results, a discussion is presented on the caution that should be exercised when measuring or describing the intermittent flow of pedestrians through narrow doors. (paper: interdisciplinary statistical mechanics)

  3. Traffic flow behavior at un-signalized intersection with crossings pedestrians

    Science.gov (United States)

    Khallouk, A.; Echab, H.; Ez-Zahraouy, H.; Lakouari, N.

    2018-02-01

    Mixed traffic flux composed of crossing pedestrians and vehicles extensively exists in cities. To study the characteristics of the interference traffic flux, we develop a pedestrian-vehicle cellular automata model to present the interaction behaviors on a simple cross road. By realizing the fundamental parameters (i.e. injecting rates α1, α2, the extracting rate β and the pedestrian arrival rate αP), simulations are carried out. The vehicular traffic flux is calculated in terms of rates. The effect of the crosswalk can be regarded as a dynamic impurity. The system phase diagrams in the (α1 ,αP) plane are built. It is found that the phase diagrams consist essentially of four phases namely Free Flow, Congested, Maximal Current and Gridlock. The value of the Maximal current phase depends on the extracting rate β, while the Gridlock phase is achieved only when the pedestrians generating rate is higher than a critical value. Furthermore, the effect of vehicles changing lane (Pch1 ,Pch2) and the location of the crosswalk XP on the dynamic characteristics of vehicles flow are investigated. It is found that traffic situation in the system is slightly enhanced if the location of the crosswalks XP is far from the intersection. However, when Pch1, Pch2 increase, the traffic becomes congested and the Gridlock phase enlarges.

  4. Evaluation of a "Smart" Pedestrian Counting System Based on Echo State Networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Poigné Axel

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract We have designed an inexpensive intelligent pedestrian counting system. The pedestrian counting system consists of several counters that can be connected together in a distributed fashion and communicate over the wireless channel. The motion pattern is recorded using a set of passive infrared (PIR sensors. Each counter has one wireless sensor node that processes the PIR sensor data and transmits it to a base station. Then echo state network, a special kind of recurrent neural network, is used to predict the pedestrian count from the input pattern. The evaluation of the performance of such networks in a novel kind of application is one focus of this work. The counter gave a performance of 80.4% which is better than the commercially available low-priced pedestrian counters. The article reports the experiments we did for analyzing the counterperformance and lists the strengths and limitations of the current implementation. It will also report the preliminary test results obtained by substituting the PIR sensors with low-cost active IR distance sensors which can improve the counter performance further.

  5. Identifying and tracking pedestrians based on sensor fusion and motion stability predictions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Musleh, Basam; García, Fernando; Otamendi, Javier; Armingol, José Maria; de la Escalera, Arturo

    2010-01-01

    The lack of trustworthy sensors makes development of Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) applications a tough task. It is necessary to develop intelligent systems by combining reliable sensors and real-time algorithms to send the proper, accurate messages to the drivers. In this article, an application to detect and predict the movement of pedestrians in order to prevent an imminent collision has been developed and tested under real conditions. The proposed application, first, accurately measures the position of obstacles using a two-sensor hybrid fusion approach: a stereo camera vision system and a laser scanner. Second, it correctly identifies pedestrians using intelligent algorithms based on polylines and pattern recognition related to leg positions (laser subsystem) and dense disparity maps and u-v disparity (vision subsystem). Third, it uses statistical validation gates and confidence regions to track the pedestrian within the detection zones of the sensors and predict their position in the upcoming frames. The intelligent sensor application has been experimentally tested with success while tracking pedestrians that cross and move in zigzag fashion in front of a vehicle.

  6. Identifying and Tracking Pedestrians Based on Sensor Fusion and Motion Stability Predictions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Arturo de la Escalera

    2010-08-01

    Full Text Available The lack of trustworthy sensors makes development of Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS applications a tough task. It is necessary to develop intelligent systems by combining reliable sensors and real-time algorithms to send the proper, accurate messages to the drivers. In this article, an application to detect and predict the movement of pedestrians in order to prevent an imminent collision has been developed and tested under real conditions. The proposed application, first, accurately measures the position of obstacles using a two-sensor hybrid fusion approach: a stereo camera vision system and a laser scanner. Second, it correctly identifies pedestrians using intelligent algorithms based on polylines and pattern recognition related to leg positions (laser subsystem and dense disparity maps and u-v disparity (vision subsystem. Third, it uses statistical validation gates and confidence regions to track the pedestrian within the detection zones of the sensors and predict their position in the upcoming frames. The intelligent sensor application has been experimentally tested with success while tracking pedestrians that cross and move in zigzag fashion in front of a vehicle.

  7. Evaluation of microwave detection equipment in terms of reliability, durability and pedestrian safety.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Schagen, I. van & Sherborne, D.

    1991-01-01

    Urban traffic light cycle times are almost exclusively directed at maximizing throughput and minimizing delay of motorized traffic. The needs of pedestrians and pedal cyclists are of minor importance and their delay times are usually disregarded. Both safety and mobility of pedestrians and pedal

  8. Tension Pneumothorax following an Accidental Kerosene Poisoning ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Tension pneumothorax is a rare complication following an accidental kerosene poisoning. In such situation, a bed-side needle thoracocentesis is performed because of its potential of becoming fatal; hence its clinical importance. A case of 15 month old boy with tension pneumothorax following accidental kerosene ...

  9. A Fractional Micro-Macro Model for Crowds of Pedestrians Based on Fractional Mean Field Games

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    Kecai Cao; Yang Quan Chen; Daniel Stuart

    2016-01-01

    Modeling a crowd of pedestrians has been considered in this paper from different aspects. Based on fractional microscopic model that may be much more close to reality, a fractional macroscopic model has been proposed using conservation law of mass. Then in order to characterize the competitive and cooperative interactions among pedestrians, fractional mean field games are utilized in the modeling problem when the number of pedestrians goes to infinity and fractional dynamic model composed of fractional backward and fractional forward equations are constructed in macro scale. Fractional micromacro model for crowds of pedestrians are obtained in the end.Simulation results are also included to illustrate the proposed fractional microscopic model and fractional macroscopic model,respectively.

  10. Real-time pedestrian detection in a Truck's blind spot camera

    OpenAIRE

    Van Beeck, Kristof; Goedemé, Toon

    2014-01-01

    In this paper we present a multi-pedestrian detection and tracking framework targeting a specific application: detecting vulnerable road users in a truck's blind spot zone. Research indicates that existing non-vision based safety solutions are not able to handle this problem completely. Therefore we aim to develop an active safety system which warns the truck driver if pedestrians are present in the truck's blind spot zone. Our system solely uses the vision input from the truck's blind spot c...

  11. Performance of collision damage mitigation braking systems and their effects on human injury in the event of car-to-pedestrian accidents.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Matsui, Yasuhiro; Han, Yong; Mizuno, Koji

    2011-11-01

    The number of traffic deaths in Japan was 4,863 in 2010. Pedestrians account for the highest number (1,714, 35%), and vehicle occupants the second highest (1,602, 33%). Pedestrian protection is a key countermeasure to reduce casualties in traffic accidents. A striking vehicle's impact velocity could be considered a parameter influencing the severity of injury and possibility of death in pedestrian crashes. A collision damage mitigation braking system (CDMBS) using a sensor to detect pedestrians could be effective for reducing the vehicle/pedestrian impact velocity. Currently in Japan, cars equipped with the CDMBS also have vision sensors such as a stereo camera for pedestrian detection. However, the ability of vision sensors in production cars to properly detect pedestrians has not yet been established. The effect of reducing impact velocity on the pedestrian injury risk has also not been determined. The first objective of this study is to evaluate the performance of the CDMBS in detecting pedestrians when it is installed in production cars. The second objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of reducing impact velocity on mitigating pedestrian injury. Firstly, impact experiments were performed using a car with the CDMBS in which the car collided with a pedestrian surrogate. In these tests, the velocity was chosen for the various test runs to be 20, 40 and 60 km/h, respectively, which were based on the velocity distribution in real-world pedestrian crashes. The results indicated that the impact velocity reduction ranged approximately from 10 to 15 km/h at the standing location of a pedestrian surrogate at both daytime and nighttime lighting conditions. These results show that the system has the potential to reduce pedestrian casualties from car-to-pedestrian contacts. Secondly, finite-element analyses were performed simulating vehicle-to- pedestrian impacts with the THUMS pedestrian models. The vehicle models selected for the study included a medium sedan

  12. Exploring the mechanisms of vehicle front-end shape on pedestrian head injuries caused by ground impact.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yin, Sha; Li, Jiani; Xu, Jun

    2017-09-01

    In pedestrian-vehicle accidents, pedestrians typically suffer from secondary impact with the ground after the primary contact with vehicles. However, information about the fundamental mechanism of pedestrian head injury from ground impact remains minimal, thereby hindering further improvement in pedestrian safety. This study addresses this issue by using multi-body modeling and computation to investigate the influence of vehicle front-end shape on pedestrian safety. Accordingly, a simulation matrix is constructed to vary bonnet leading-edge height, bonnet length, bonnet angle, and windshield angle. Subsequently, a set of 315 pedestrian-vehicle crash simulations are conducted using the multi-body simulation software MADYMO. Three vehicle velocities, i.e., 20, 30, and 40km/h, are set as the scenarios. Results show that the top governing factor is bonnet leading-edge height. The posture and head injury at the instant of head ground impact vary dramatically with increasing height because of the significant rise of the body bending point and the movement of the collision point. The bonnet angle is the second dominant factor that affects head-ground injury, followed by bonnet length and windshield angle. The results may elucidate one of the critical barriers to understanding head injury caused by ground impact and provide a solid theoretical guideline for considering pedestrian safety in vehicle design. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  13. Risk Factors for Road Transport-Related Injury among Pedestrians in Rural Ghana: Implications for Road Safety Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Teye-Kwadjo, Enoch

    2017-01-01

    Objectives: Injuries and mortality resulting from pedestrian road traffic crashes are a major public health problem in Ghana. This study investigated risk factors for road transport-related injury among pedestrians in rural Ghana. Design: Case study design using qualitative data. Method: In-depth interviews were conducted with pedestrians.…

  14. 33 CFR 117.801 - Newtown Creek, Dutch Kills, English Kills and their tributaries.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-07-01

    ... 33 Navigation and Navigable Waters 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Newtown Creek, Dutch Kills, English Kills and their tributaries. 117.801 Section 117.801 Navigation and Navigable Waters COAST GUARD....801 Newtown Creek, Dutch Kills, English Kills and their tributaries. (a) The following requirements...

  15. Smartphone-based integrated PDR/GPS/Bluetooth pedestrian location

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Xianghong; Wei, Dongyan; Lai, Qifeng; Xu, Ying; Yuan, Hong

    2017-02-01

    Typical indoor location method is fingerprint and traditional outdoor location system is GPS. Both of them are of poor accuracy and limited only for indoor or outdoor environments. As the smartphones are equipped with MEMS sensors, it means PDR can be widely used. In this paper, an algorithm of smartphone-based integrated PDR/GPS/Bluetooth for pedestrian location in the indoor/outdoor is proposed, which can be highly expected to realize seamless indoor/outdoor localization of the pedestrian. In addition, we also provide technologies to estimate orientation with Magnetometer and Gyroscope and detect context with output of sensors. The extensive experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can realize seamless indoor/outdoor localization.

  16. Crumple zone design for pedestrian protection using impact analysis

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Moon, Hyung Il; Jeon, Young Eun; Kim, Dae Young; Kim, Heon Young [Kangwon National Univ., Chuncheon si (Korea, Republic of); Kim, Yong Soo [Product Development Team, Gyeongsan si (Korea, Republic of)

    2012-08-15

    This paper describes the design process for an automobile crumple zone for pedestrian protection. The impact load and bending moments predicted by impact analysis were used to design a plastic structure that may help reduce pedestrian injuries to the thigh area. The fracture effect was incorporated into the model by calculating the damage to the plastic material during impact, and the analysis was conducted under the European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP) test conditions, using the upper legform developed by ESI Corporation. In addition, the values predicted by the analysis were validated by comparison with results of actual impact tests.

  17. Crumple zone design for pedestrian protection using impact analysis

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Moon, Hyung Il; Jeon, Young Eun; Kim, Dae Young; Kim, Heon Young; Kim, Yong Soo

    2012-01-01

    This paper describes the design process for an automobile crumple zone for pedestrian protection. The impact load and bending moments predicted by impact analysis were used to design a plastic structure that may help reduce pedestrian injuries to the thigh area. The fracture effect was incorporated into the model by calculating the damage to the plastic material during impact, and the analysis was conducted under the European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP) test conditions, using the upper legform developed by ESI Corporation. In addition, the values predicted by the analysis were validated by comparison with results of actual impact tests

  18. Accidental Poisoning with Otapiapia: a Local Organophasphate ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Children are prone to accidental poisoning. We report this fatal organophosphate poisoning of a 3-year-old Nigerian boy following accidental ingestion of a homemade cocktail of kerosene and 'Otapiapia': a local rodenticide to highlight the dangers inherent in un-regulated production, home use and storage of this ...

  19. A Lattice Model for Bidirectional Pedestrian Flow on Gradient Road

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ge Hong-Xia; Cheng Rong-Jun; Lo Siu-Ming

    2014-01-01

    Ramps and sloping roads appear everywhere in the built environment. It is obvious that the movement pattern of people in the sloping path may be different as compared with the pattern on level roads. Previously, most of the studies, especially the mathematical and simulation models, on pedestrian movement consider the flow at level routes. This study proposes a new lattice model for bidirectional pedestrian flow on gradient road. The stability condition is obtained by using linear stability theory. The nonlinear analysis method is employed to derive the modified Korteweg-de Vries (mKdV) equation, and the space of pedestrian flow is divided into three regions: the stable region, the metastable region, and the unstable region respectively. Furthermore, the time-dependent Ginzburg—Landan (TDGL) equation is deduced and solved through the reductive perturbation method. Finally, we present detailed results obtained from the model, and it is found that the stability of the model is enhanced in uphill situation while reduced in downhill situation with increasing slope. (general)

  20. Do lower income areas have more pedestrian casualties?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Noland, Robert B; Klein, Nicholas J; Tulach, Nicholas K

    2013-10-01

    Pedestrian and motor vehicle casualties are analyzed for the State of New Jersey with the objective of determining how the income of an area may be associated with casualties. We develop a maximum-likelihood negative binomial model to examine how various spatially defined variables, including road, income, and vehicle ownership, may be associated with casualties using census block-group level data. Due to suspected spatial correlation in the data we also employ a conditional autoregressive Bayesian model using Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation, implemented with Crimestat software. Results suggest that spatial correlation is an issue as some variables are not statistically significant in the spatial model. We find that both pedestrian and motor vehicle casualties are greater in lower income block groups. Both are also associated with less household vehicle ownership, which is not surprising for pedestrian casualties, but is a surprising result for motor vehicle casualties. Controls for various road categories provide expected relationships. Individual level data is further examined to determine relationships between the location of a crash victim and their residence zip code, and this largely confirms a residual effect associated with both lower income individuals and lower income areas. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. Motor vehicle and pedestrian collisions: burden of severe injury on major versus neighborhood roads.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rothman, Linda; Slater, Morgan; Meaney, Christopher; Howard, Andrew

    2010-02-01

    To determine whether the severity of injuries sustained by pedestrians involved in motor vehicle collisions varies by road type and age. All police-reported pedestrian motor vehicle collisions in the city of Toronto, Canada, between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2005, were analyzed. Geographic Information Systems software was used to determine whether the collisions occurred on major or neighborhood roads. Age-specific estimates of the burden of pedestrian collisions are presented. Odds ratios and 95 percent confidence intervals were calculated to examine age-specific relationships between injury severity and road type. A second analysis comparing the distribution of severe injury location between age groups was also performed. The majority of collisions involved adults (68%), although elderly pedestrians were overrepresented in fatal collisions (49%). Severe and fatal collisions involving working-age and elderly adult pedestrians were more likely on major roads. Odds of severe injury occurring on a major road were 1.36 (95% CI: 1.17-1.57) times higher for adults ages 18 to 64, and 1.55 (95% CI: 1.22-1.99) times higher for elderly aged 65+. By contrast, severe injuries among children were more common on neighborhood roads, with odds of severe injury on a major road of 0.64 (95% CI: 0.37-1.1) for children aged 5 to 9. Among children under 9, 64-67 percent of hospitalized or fatal injuries occurred on neighborhood roads, a marked difference from the distribution of such injuries in adults or the elderly, for whom only 29-30 percent of hospitalized or fatal injuries occurred on neighborhood roads (chi-square = 52.6, p roads alone will not make child pedestrians safer. Pedestrian interventions specific to children and focused on neighborhood roads must be considered in urban centers like Toronto.

  2. Characterisation of childhood and adolescence accidental fatalities ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Background: Accidental death in childhood and adolescence is posing a public health problem in Nigeria, as most of these deaths were not caused by the victims. There is need to research into the pattern and circumstances surrounding the death. Aim: To characterise and study accidental deaths in childhood and ...

  3. The effects of peer influence on adolescent pedestrian road-crossing decisions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pfeffer, K; Hunter, E

    2013-01-01

    Adolescence is a high-risk period for pedestrian injury. It is also a time of heightened susceptibility to peer influence. The aim of this research was to examine the effects of peer influence on the pedestrian road-crossing decisions of adolescents. Using 10 videos of road-crossing sites, 80 16- to 18-year-olds were asked to make pedestrian road-crossing decisions. Participants were assigned to one of 4 experimental conditions: negative peer (influencing unsafe decisions), positive peer (influencing cautious decisions), silent peer (who observed but did not comment), and no peer (the participant completed the task alone). Peers from the adolescent's own friendship group were recruited to influence either an unsafe or a cautious decision. Statistically significant differences were found between peer conditions. Participants least often identified safe road-crossing sites when accompanied by a negative peer and more frequently identified dangerous road-crossing sites when accompanied by a positive peer. Both cautious and unsafe comments from a peer influenced adolescent pedestrians' decisions. These findings showed that road-crossing decisions of adolescents were influenced by both unsafe and cautious comments from their peers. The discussion highlighted the role that peers can play in both increasing and reducing adolescent risk-taking.

  4. An M/M/c/K State-Dependent Model for Pedestrian Flow Control and Design of Facilities.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Khalidur Rahman

    Full Text Available Pedestrian overflow causes queuing delay and in turn, is controlled by the capacity of a facility. Flow control or blocking control takes action to avoid queues from building up to extreme values. Thus, in this paper, the problem of pedestrian flow control in open outdoor walking facilities in equilibrium condition is investigated using M/M/c/K queuing models. State dependent service rate based on speed and density relationship is utilized. The effective rate of the Poisson arrival process to the facility is determined so as there is no overflow of pedestrians. In addition, the use of the state dependent queuing models to the design of the facilities and the effect of pedestrian personal capacity on the design and the traffic congestion are discussed. The study does not validate the sustainability of adaptation of Western design codes for the pedestrian facilities in the countries like Bangladesh.

  5. Pedestrian Flow in the Mean Field Limit

    KAUST Repository

    Haji Ali, Abdul Lateef

    2012-01-01

    -dependent density of two-dimensional pedestrians satisfies a four-dimensional integro-differential Fokker-Planck equation. To approximate the solution of the Fokker-Planck equation we use a time-splitting approach and solve the diffusion part using a Crank

  6. Classification and checking model of pedestrian crossing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Luis Delgado Méndez

    2012-11-01

    After realizing this investigation it can be confirmed that the functionality of a pedestrian crossing depends on almost a hundred parameters which must be checked or measured, in turn proving that this design and construction process is indeed complex.

  7. About Assessment Criteria of Driver's Accidental Abilities

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lobanova, Yuliya I.; Glushko, Kirill V.

    2016-01-01

    The article points at the importance of studying the human factor as a cause of accidents of drivers, especially in loosely structured traffic situations. The description of the experiment on the measurement of driver's accidental abilities is given. Under accidental ability is meant the capability to ensure the security of driving as a behavior…

  8. Usability and Feasibility of an Internet-Based Virtual Pedestrian Environment to Teach Children to Cross Streets Safely

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schwebel, David C.; McClure, Leslie A.; Severson, Joan

    2013-01-01

    Child pedestrian injury is a preventable global health challenge. Successful training efforts focused on child behavior, including individualized streetside training and training in large virtual pedestrian environments, are laborious and expensive. This study considers the usability and feasibility of a virtual pedestrian environment “game” application to teach children safe street-crossing behavior via the internet, a medium that could be broadly disseminated at low cost. Ten 7- and 8-year-old children participated. They engaged in an internet-based virtual pedestrian environment and completed a brief assessment survey. Researchers rated children's behavior while engaged in the game. Both self-report and researcher observations indicated the internet-based system was readily used by the children without adult support. The youth understood how to engage in the system and used it independently and attentively. The program also was feasible. It provided multiple measures of pedestrian safety that could be used for research or training purposes. Finally, the program was rated by children as engaging and educational. Researcher ratings suggested children used the program with minimal fidgeting or boredom. The pilot test suggests an internet-based virtual pedestrian environment offers a usable, feasible, engaging, and educational environment for child pedestrian safety training. If future research finds children learn the cognitive and perceptual skills needed to cross streets safely within it, internet-based training may provide a low-cost medium to broadly disseminate child pedestrian safety training. The concept may be generalized to other domains of health-related functioning such as teen driving safety, adolescent sexual risk-taking, and adolescent substance use. PMID:24678263

  9. Acoustic characteristics of hybrid electric vehicles and the safety of pedestrians who are blind

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-08-01

    Quieter cars such as electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) may reduce auditory cues used by pedestrians to assess the state of nearby traffic and, as a result, their use may have an adverse impact on pedestrian safety. In order ...

  10. Development of Model for Pedestrian Gap Based on Land Use Pattern at Midblock Location and Estimation of Delay at Intersections

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ramesh, Adepu; Ashritha, Kilari; Kumar, Molugaram

    2018-04-01

    Walking has always been a prime source of human mobility for short distance travel. Traffic congestion has become a major problem for safe pedestrian crossing in most of the metropolitan cities. This has emphasized for providing a sufficient pedestrian gap for safe crossing on urban road. The present works aims in understanding factors that influence pedestrian crossing behaviour. Four locations were chosen for identification of pedestrian crossing behaviour, gap characteristics, waiting time etc., in Hyderabad city. From the study it was observed that pedestrian behaviour and crossing patterns are different and is influenced by land use pattern. A gap acceptance model was developed from the data for improving pedestrian safety at mid-block location; the model was validated using the existing data. Pedestrian delay was estimated at intersection using Highway Capacity Manual (HCM). It was observed that field delays are less when compared to delay arrived from HCM method.

  11. Pedestrian Zones As Important Urban Strategies in Redeveloping the Community - Case Study: Alba Iulia Borough Park

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Oana Elena BLAGA

    2013-02-01

    Full Text Available The pedestrian zone issue is by far an important matter in the context of urban regeneration. Cities which adopted this strategy – the pedestrian zones – have recorded better urban attitudes regarding the urban environment, a continuous growth of the urban quality, an improved urban ecosystem  and continuous attractiveness for investment and  tourism. This article explores the evolution of the pedestrian zones as ideas in utopian urban models in the early 1900 and later as efficient environmental friendly strategies adopted by cities. After identifying the path this concept followed, from a simple idea to an important strategy of urban development, the paper focuses on the major characteristics and benefits of the pedestrian precincts. Next, the article focuses on the newest pedestrian zone in one of the Romanian cities, Alba Iulia and it tries to identify the types of impact this area has so far on the community and entire city.

  12. Evaluation of users' satisfaction on pedestrian facilities using pair-wise comparison approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zainol, R.; Ahmad, F.; Nordin, N. A.; Aripin, A. W. M.

    2014-02-01

    Global climate change issues demand people of the world to change the way they live today. Thus, current cities need to be redeveloped towards less use of carbon in their day to day operations. Pedestrianized environment is one of the approaches used in reducing carbon foot print in cities. Heritage cities are the first to be looked into since they were built in the era in which motorized vehicles were minimal. Therefore, the research explores users' satisfaction on assessment of physical attributes of pedestrianization in Melaka Historical City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It aims to examine users' satisfaction on pedestrian facilities provided within the study area using pair wise questionnaire comparison approach. A survey of 200 respondents using random sampling was conducted in six different sites namely Jonker Street, Church Street, Kota Street, Goldsmith Street, Merdeka Street to Taming Sari Tower and Merdeka Street to River Cruise terminal. The survey consists of an assessment tool based on a nine-point scale of users' satisfaction level of pathway properties, zebra pedestrian crossing, street furniture, personal safety, adjacent to traffic flow, aesthetic and amenities. Analytical hierarchical process (AHP) was used to avoid any biasness in analyzing the data collected. Findings show that Merdeka Street to Taming Sari Tower as the street that scores the highest satisfaction level that fulfils all the required needs of a pedestrianized environment. Similar assessment elements can be used to evaluate existing streets in other cities and these criteria should also be used in planning for future cities.

  13. Stationery equipment for detecting radioactive material on passing pedestrians developed and made in RFYC - VNIIEF

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kapustin, D.S.

    2000-01-01

    At VNIIEF, radiation monitors have been designed that measure for transported or pedestrian carried radioactive material and allow a quick determination of an excess gamma and/or neutron background on natural or fixed levels. For this problem, neither the type of the material or its amount need to be determined, but other parameters are measured to detect highly sensitive or priority materials, defined by the threshold of detection, operational monitoring efficiency, simplicity of use and demonstrative imaging of results. All these parameters were considered at VNlIEF in the design of pedestrian radiation monitor KPRM-P1. Post KPRM-P1 is an automatic pedestrian radiation monitor, installed on communicating and KPP enterprises, and intended for checking for authorized or unauthorized radioactive material possessed by pedestrians crossing a controlled space. (authors)

  14. Probabilistic assessment of the dynamic interaction between multiple pedestrians and vertical vibrations of footbridges

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tubino, Federica

    2018-03-01

    The effect of human-structure interaction in the vertical direction for footbridges is studied based on a probabilistic approach. The bridge is modeled as a continuous dynamic system, while pedestrians are schematized as moving single-degree-of-freedom systems with random dynamic properties. The non-dimensional form of the equations of motion allows us to obtain results that can be applied in a very wide set of cases. An extensive Monte Carlo simulation campaign is performed, varying the main non-dimensional parameters identified, and the mean values and coefficients of variation of the damping ratio and of the non-dimensional natural frequency of the coupled system are reported. The results obtained can be interpreted from two different points of view. If the characterization of pedestrians' equivalent dynamic parameters is assumed as uncertain, as revealed from a current literature review, then the paper provides a range of possible variations of the coupled system damping ratio and natural frequency as a function of pedestrians' parameters. Assuming that a reliable characterization of pedestrians' dynamic parameters is available (which is not the case at present, but could be in the future), the results presented can be adopted to estimate the damping ratio and natural frequency of the coupled footbridge-pedestrian system for a very wide range of real structures.

  15. Evaluation of a “Smart” Pedestrian Counting System Based on Echo State Networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    2009-03-01

    Full Text Available We have designed an inexpensive intelligent pedestrian counting system. The pedestrian counting system consists of several counters that can be connected together in a distributed fashion and communicate over the wireless channel. The motion pattern is recorded using a set of passive infrared (PIR sensors. Each counter has one wireless sensor node that processes the PIR sensor data and transmits it to a base station. Then echo state network, a special kind of recurrent neural network, is used to predict the pedestrian count from the input pattern. The evaluation of the performance of such networks in a novel kind of application is one focus of this work. The counter gave a performance of 80.4% which is better than the commercially available low-priced pedestrian counters. The article reports the experiments we did for analyzing the counterperformance and lists the strengths and limitations of the current implementation. It will also report the preliminary test results obtained by substituting the PIR sensors with low-cost active IR distance sensors which can improve the counter performance further.

  16. Modeling pedestrian shopping behavior using principles of bounded rationality: model comparison and validation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhu, Wei; Timmermans, Harry

    2011-06-01

    Models of geographical choice behavior have been dominantly based on rational choice models, which assume that decision makers are utility-maximizers. Rational choice models may be less appropriate as behavioral models when modeling decisions in complex environments in which decision makers may simplify the decision problem using heuristics. Pedestrian behavior in shopping streets is an example. We therefore propose a modeling framework for pedestrian shopping behavior incorporating principles of bounded rationality. We extend three classical heuristic rules (conjunctive, disjunctive and lexicographic rule) by introducing threshold heterogeneity. The proposed models are implemented using data on pedestrian behavior in Wang Fujing Street, the city center of Beijing, China. The models are estimated and compared with multinomial logit models and mixed logit models. Results show that the heuristic models are the best for all the decisions that are modeled. Validation tests are carried out through multi-agent simulation by comparing simulated spatio-temporal agent behavior with the observed pedestrian behavior. The predictions of heuristic models are slightly better than those of the multinomial logit models.

  17. Smart Pedestrian Crossing Management at Traffic Light Junctions through a Fuzzy-Based Approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Giovanni Pau

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available In the last few years, numerous research efforts have been conducted to merge the Internet of Things (IoT with smart city environments. The goal to make a city “smart” is arising as a possible solution to lessen the issues caused by the urban population growth and fast urbanization. Attention also has focused on the pedestrian crossings because they are one of the most dangerous places in the transport field. Information and Communications Technologies (ICT can undoubtedly be an excellent support in developing infrastructures that can best manage pedestrian crossing. For this reason, this paper introduces a fuzzy logic-based solution able to manage dynamically the traffic lights’ phases in signalized pedestrian crossings. The proposed approach provides the possibility to change the phases of the traffic light taking into account the time of the day and the number of pedestrians about to cross the road. The paper presents a thorough description of the fuzzy logic controller configuration, an in-depth analysis of the application scenario and simulative assessments obtained through Vissim simulations.

  18. Spatial environmental risk factors for pedestrian injury collisions in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico (2008-2009): implications for urban planning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fuentes, Cesar Mario; Hernandez, Vladimir

    2013-01-01

    The aim of this study is to examine the spatial distribution of pedestrian injury collisions and analyse the environmental (social and physical) risk factors in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. More specifically, this study investigates the influence of land use, density, traffic and socio-economic characteristics. This cross sectional study is based on pedestrian injury collision data that were collected by the Municipal Transit Police during 2008-2009. This research presents an analysis of vehicle-pedestrian collisions and their spatial risk determinants using mixed methods that included (1) spatial/geographical information systems (GIS) analysis of pedestrian collision data and (2) ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis to explain the density of pedestrian collisions data. In our model, we found a higher probability for pedestrian collisions in census tracts with population and employment density, large concentration of commercial/retail land uses and older people (65 and more). Interventions to alleviate this situation including transportation planning such as decentralisation of municipal transport system, investment in road infrastructure - density of traffic lights, pedestrian crossing, road design, improves lane demarcation. Besides, land use planning interventions should be implemented in commercial/retail areas, in particular separating pedestrian and vehicular spaces.

  19. Killing Range

    Science.gov (United States)

    Asal, Victor; Rethemeyer, R. Karl; Horgan, John

    2015-01-01

    This paper presents an analysis of the Provisional Irish Republican Army's (PIRA) brigade level behavior during the Northern Ireland Conflict (1970-1998) and identifies the organizational factors that impact a brigade's lethality as measured via terrorist attacks. Key independent variables include levels of technical expertise, cadre age, counter-terrorism policies experienced, brigade size, and IED components and delivery methods. We find that technical expertise within a brigade allows for careful IED usage, which significantly minimizes civilian casualties (a specific strategic goal of PIRA) while increasing the ability to kill more high value targets with IEDs. Lethal counter-terrorism events also significantly affect a brigade's likelihood of killing both civilians and high-value targets but in different ways. Killing PIRA members significantly decreases IED fatalities but also significantly decreases the possibility of zero civilian IED-related deaths in a given year. Killing innocent Catholics in a Brigade's county significantly increases total and civilian IED fatalities. Together the results suggest the necessity to analyze dynamic situational variables that impact terrorist group behavior at the sub-unit level. PMID:25838603

  20. Pedestrian injury risk and the effect of age.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Niebuhr, Tobias; Junge, Mirko; Rosén, Erik

    2016-01-01

    Older adults and pedestrians both represent especially vulnerable groups in traffic. In the literature, hazards are usually described by the corresponding injury risks of a collision. This paper investigates the MAIS3+F risk (the risk of sustaining at least one injury of AIS 3 severity or higher, or fatal injury) for pedestrians in full-frontal pedestrian-to-passenger car collisions. Using some assumptions, a model-based approach to injury risk, allowing for the specification of individual injury risk parameters for individuals, is presented. To balance model accuracy and sample size, the GIDAS (German In-depth Accident Study) data set is divided into three age groups; children (0-14); adults (15-60); and older adults (older than 60). For each group, individual risk curves are computed. Afterwards, the curves are re-aggregated to the overall risk function. The derived model addresses the influence of age on the outcome of pedestrian-to-car accidents. The results show that older people compared with younger people have a higher MAIS3+F injury risk at all collision speeds. The injury risk for children behaves surprisingly. Compared to other age groups, their MAIS3+F injury risk is lower at lower collision speeds, but substantially higher once a threshold has been exceeded. The resulting injury risk curve obtained by re-aggregation looks surprisingly similar to the frequently used logistic regression function computed for the overall injury risk. However, for homogenous subgroups - such as the three age groups - logistic regression describes the typical risk behavior less accurately than the introduced model-based approach. Since the effect of demographic change on traffic safety is greater nowadays, there is a need to incorporate age into established models. Thus far, this is one of the first studies incorporating traffic participant age to an explicit risk function. The presented approach can be especially useful for the modeling and prediction of risks, and for the

  1. Killing-Yano tensors, rank-2 Killing tensors, and conserved quantities in higher dimensions

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Krtous, Pavel [Institute of Theoretical Physics, Charles University, V Holesovickach 2, Prague (Czech Republic); Kubiznak, David [Institute of Theoretical Physics, Charles University, V Holesovickach 2, Prague (Czech Republic); Page, Don N. [Theoretical Physics Institute, University of Alberta, Edmonton T6G 2G7, Alberta (Canada); Frolov, Valeri P. [Theoretical Physics Institute, University of Alberta, Edmonton T6G 2G7, Alberta (Canada)

    2007-02-15

    From the metric and one Killing-Yano tensor of rank D-2 in any D-dimensional spacetime with such a principal Killing-Yano tensor, we show how to generate k = [(D+1)/2] Killing-Yano tensors, of rank D-2j for all 0 {<=} j {<=} k-1, and k rank-2 Killing tensors, giving k constants of geodesic motion that are in involution. For the example of the Kerr-NUT-AdS spacetime (hep-th/0604125) with its principal Killing-Yano tensor (gr-qc/0610144), these constants and the constants from the k Killing vectors give D independent constants in involution, making the geodesic motion completely integrable (hep-th/0611083). The constants of motion are also related to the constants recently obtained in the separation of the Hamilton-Jacobi and Klein-Gordon equations (hep-th/0611245)

  2. Killing-Yano tensors, rank-2 Killing tensors, and conserved quantities in higher dimensions

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Krtous, Pavel; Kubiznak, David; Page, Don N.; Frolov, Valeri P.

    2007-01-01

    From the metric and one Killing-Yano tensor of rank D-2 in any D-dimensional spacetime with such a principal Killing-Yano tensor, we show how to generate k = [(D+1)/2] Killing-Yano tensors, of rank D-2j for all 0 ≤ j ≤ k-1, and k rank-2 Killing tensors, giving k constants of geodesic motion that are in involution. For the example of the Kerr-NUT-AdS spacetime (hep-th/0604125) with its principal Killing-Yano tensor (gr-qc/0610144), these constants and the constants from the k Killing vectors give D independent constants in involution, making the geodesic motion completely integrable (hep-th/0611083). The constants of motion are also related to the constants recently obtained in the separation of the Hamilton-Jacobi and Klein-Gordon equations (hep-th/0611245)

  3. Analysis of Crossing Speed of the Pedestrians in Marked and Unmarked Crosswalks in the Signalized and Un-Signalized Intersections (Case Study: Rasht city)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Behbahani, Hamid; Najafi Moghaddam Gilani, Vahid; Jahangir Samet, Mehdi; Salehfard, Reza

    2017-10-01

    Pedestrians affect the traffic in the signalized and un-signalized intersections. Therefore, identifying the behavioural features of the pedestrians is of great importance and may result in better designing facilities for them. In this study, by shooting the four intersections in Rasht for 15 hours and inventory from 4568 pedestrians, crossing speed of the pedestrians in the marked crosswalks and unmarked crosswalks was evaluated and analysed. Results showed that pedestrians‧ crossing speed in the marked crosswalks is higher than their crossing speed in the unmarked crosswalks in both signalized and un-signalized intersections. Moreover, in the unmarked crosswalks in the signalized intersections, 15th percentile speed of male pedestrians, female pedestrians and group of pedestrians’ decrease 6.4%, 5.4% and 12.2%, respectively, compared with the 15th percentile speed in the marked crosswalks. Above-mentioned values in the unmarked crosswalks in the un-signalized intersections for male pedestrians, female pedestrians, and group of pedestrians decrease 1.2%, 3.8%, and 1.4%, respectively.

  4. Factors influencing safety in a sample of marked pedestrian crossings selected for safety inspections in the city of Oslo.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Elvik, Rune; Sørensen, Michael W J; Nævestad, Tor-Olav

    2013-10-01

    This paper reports an analysis of factors influencing safety in a sample of marked pedestrian crossings in the city of Oslo, Norway. The sample consists of 159 marked pedestrian crossings where a total of 316 accidents were recorded during a period of five years. The crossings were selected for inspection because of they were, for various reasons, regarded as sub-standard. The sample of crossings is therefore not representative of all pedestrian crossings in Oslo. Factors influencing the number of accidents were studied by means of negative binomial regression. Factors that were studied included the volume of pedestrians and vehicles, the number of traffic lanes at the crossing, the location of the crossing (midblock or junction), the type of traffic control, the share of pedestrians using the crossing and the speed of approaching vehicles. The analysis confirmed the presence of a "safety-in-numbers" effect, meaning that an increase in the number of pedestrians is associated with a lower risk of accident for each pedestrian. Crossings located in four-leg junctions or roundabouts had more accidents than crossings located in three-leg junctions or on sections between junctions. A high share of pedestrians crossing the road outside the marked crossing was associated with a high number of accidents. Increased speed was associated with an increased number of accidents. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  5. Delving Deep into Multiscale Pedestrian Detection via Single Scale Feature Maps

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xinchuan Fu

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available The standard pipeline in pedestrian detection is sliding a pedestrian model on an image feature pyramid to detect pedestrians of different scales. In this pipeline, feature pyramid construction is time consuming and becomes the bottleneck for fast detection. Recently, a method called multiresolution filtered channels (MRFC was proposed which only used single scale feature maps to achieve fast detection. However, there are two shortcomings in MRFC which limit its accuracy. One is that the receptive field correspondence in different scales is weak. Another is that the features used are not scale invariance. In this paper, two solutions are proposed to tackle with the two shortcomings respectively. Specifically, scale-aware pooling is proposed to make a better receptive field correspondence, and soft decision tree is proposed to relive scale variance problem. When coupled with efficient sliding window classification strategy, our detector achieves fast detecting speed at the same time with state-of-the-art accuracy.

  6. Traffic signal phasing at intersections to improve safety for alcohol-affected pedestrians.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lenné, Michael G; Corben, Bruce F; Stephan, Karen

    2007-07-01

    Alcohol-affected pedestrians are among the highest-risk groups involved in pedestrian casualty crashes. This paper investigates the opportunities to use a modified form of traffic signal operation during high-risk periods and at high-risk locations to reduce alcohol-affected pedestrian crashes and the severity of injuries that might otherwise occur. The 'Dwell-on-Red' treatment involves displaying a red traffic signal to all vehicle directions during periods when no vehicular traffic is detected, so that drivers approach high-risk intersections at a lower speed than if a green signal were displayed. Vehicle speed data were collected before and after treatment activation at both a control and treatment site. Speed data were collected both 30 m prior to and at the intersection stop line. The treatment was associated with a reduction in mean vehicle speeds of 3.9 kph (9%) and 11.0 kph (28%) at 30 m and stop line collection points, respectively, and substantial reductions in the proportion of vehicles travelling at threatening speeds with regard to the severity of pedestrian injury. Other important road safety concerns may also benefit from this form of traffic signal modification, and it is recommended that other areas of application be explored, including the other severe trauma categories typically concentrated around signalised intersections.

  7. The Accidental Transgressor: Morally Relevant Theory of Mind

    Science.gov (United States)

    Killen, Melanie; Mulvey, Kelly Lynn; Richardson, Cameron; Jampol, Noah

    2014-01-01

    To test young children’s false belief theory of mind in a morally relevant context, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, children (N = 162) at 3.5, 5.5, and 7.5 years of age were administered 3 tasks: prototypic moral transgression task, false belief theory of mind task (ToM), and an “accidental transgressor” task, which measured a morally relevant false belief theory of mind (MoToM). Children who did not pass false belief ToM were more likely to attribute negative intentions to an accidental transgressor than children who passed false belief ToM, and to use moral reasons when blaming the accidental transgressor. In Experiment 2, children (N = 46) who did not pass false belief ToM viewed it as more acceptable to punish the accidental transgressor than did participants who passed false belief ToM. Findings are discussed in light of research on the emergence of moral judgment and theory of mind. PMID:21377148

  8. The effect of road network patterns on pedestrian safety: A zone-based Bayesian spatial modeling approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guo, Qiang; Xu, Pengpeng; Pei, Xin; Wong, S C; Yao, Danya

    2017-02-01

    Pedestrian safety is increasingly recognized as a major public health concern. Extensive safety studies have been conducted to examine the influence of multiple variables on the occurrence of pedestrian-vehicle crashes. However, the explicit relationship between pedestrian safety and road network characteristics remains unknown. This study particularly focused on the role of different road network patterns on the occurrence of crashes involving pedestrians. A global integration index via space syntax was introduced to quantify the topological structures of road networks. The Bayesian Poisson-lognormal (PLN) models with conditional autoregressive (CAR) prior were then developed via three different proximity structures: contiguity, geometry-centroid distance, and road network connectivity. The models were also compared with the PLN counterpart without spatial correlation effects. The analysis was based on a comprehensive crash dataset from 131 selected traffic analysis zones in Hong Kong. The results indicated that higher global integration was associated with more pedestrian-vehicle crashes; the irregular pattern network was proved to be safest in terms of pedestrian crash occurrences, whereas the grid pattern was the least safe; the CAR model with a neighborhood structure based on road network connectivity was found to outperform in model goodness-of-fit, implying the importance of accurately accounting for spatial correlation when modeling spatially aggregated crash data. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. An Optimal Enhanced Kalman Filter for a ZUPT-Aided Pedestrian Positioning Coupling Model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fan, Qigao; Zhang, Hai; Sun, Yan; Zhu, Yixin; Zhuang, Xiangpeng; Jia, Jie; Zhang, Pengsong

    2018-05-02

    Aimed at overcoming the problems of cumulative errors and low positioning accuracy in single Inertial Navigation Systems (INS), an Optimal Enhanced Kalman Filter (OEKF) is proposed in this paper to achieve accurate positioning of pedestrians within an enclosed environment. Firstly, the errors of the inertial sensors are analyzed, modeled, and reconstructed. Secondly, the cumulative errors in attitude and velocity are corrected using the attitude fusion filtering algorithm and Zero Velocity Update algorithm (ZUPT), respectively. Then, the OEKF algorithm is described in detail. Finally, a pedestrian indoor positioning experimental platform is established to verify the performance of the proposed positioning system. Experimental results show that the accuracy of the pedestrian indoor positioning system can reach 0.243 m, giving it a high practical value.

  10. Pedestrian detection in thermal images: An automated scale based region extraction with curvelet space validation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lakshmi, A.; Faheema, A. G. J.; Deodhare, Dipti

    2016-05-01

    Pedestrian detection is a key problem in night vision processing with a dozen of applications that will positively impact the performance of autonomous systems. Despite significant progress, our study shows that performance of state-of-the-art thermal image pedestrian detectors still has much room for improvement. The purpose of this paper is to overcome the challenge faced by the thermal image pedestrian detectors, which employ intensity based Region Of Interest (ROI) extraction followed by feature based validation. The most striking disadvantage faced by the first module, ROI extraction, is the failed detection of cloth insulted parts. To overcome this setback, this paper employs an algorithm and a principle of region growing pursuit tuned to the scale of the pedestrian. The statistics subtended by the pedestrian drastically vary with the scale and deviation from normality approach facilitates scale detection. Further, the paper offers an adaptive mathematical threshold to resolve the problem of subtracting the background while extracting cloth insulated parts as well. The inherent false positives of the ROI extraction module are limited by the choice of good features in pedestrian validation step. One such feature is curvelet feature, which has found its use extensively in optical images, but has as yet no reported results in thermal images. This has been used to arrive at a pedestrian detector with a reduced false positive rate. This work is the first venture made to scrutinize the utility of curvelet for characterizing pedestrians in thermal images. Attempt has also been made to improve the speed of curvelet transform computation. The classification task is realized through the use of the well known methodology of Support Vector Machines (SVMs). The proposed method is substantiated with qualified evaluation methodologies that permits us to carry out probing and informative comparisons across state-of-the-art features, including deep learning methods, with six

  11. Far-Infrared Based Pedestrian Detection for Driver-Assistance Systems Based on Candidate Filters, Gradient-Based Feature and Multi-Frame Approval Matching.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Guohua; Liu, Qiong

    2015-12-21

    Far-infrared pedestrian detection approaches for advanced driver-assistance systems based on high-dimensional features fail to simultaneously achieve robust and real-time detection. We propose a robust and real-time pedestrian detection system characterized by novel candidate filters, novel pedestrian features and multi-frame approval matching in a coarse-to-fine fashion. Firstly, we design two filters based on the pedestrians' head and the road to select the candidates after applying a pedestrian segmentation algorithm to reduce false alarms. Secondly, we propose a novel feature encapsulating both the relationship of oriented gradient distribution and the code of oriented gradient to deal with the enormous variance in pedestrians' size and appearance. Thirdly, we introduce a multi-frame approval matching approach utilizing the spatiotemporal continuity of pedestrians to increase the detection rate. Large-scale experiments indicate that the system works in real time and the accuracy has improved about 9% compared with approaches based on high-dimensional features only.

  12. Effective environmental factors on geographical distribution of traffic accidents on pedestrians, downtown of Tehran City.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moradi, Ali; Rahmani, Khaled; Kavousi, Amir; Eshghabadi, Farshid; Nematollahi, Shahrzad; Zainni, Slahedyn; Soori, Hamid

    2018-02-20

    The aim of this study was to geographically analyse the traffic casualties in pedestrians in downtown of Tehran City. Study population consisted of pedestrians who had traffic injury accidents from April 2014 to March 2015 in Tehran City. Data were extracted from the offices of traffic police and municipality. For analysis of environmental factors and site of accidents, Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression models and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) were used. All pedestrian accidents including 514 accidents were assessed in this study in which the site of accidents included arterial streets in 370 (71.9%) cases, collector streets in 133 cases (25.2%) and highways in 11 cases (2.1%). Geographical units of traffic accidents in pedestrians had statistically significant relationship with the number of bus stations, number of crossroads and recreational areas. Neighbourhoods close to markets are considered as the most dangerous places for injury in traffic accidents.

  13. Transit Station Congestion Index Research Based on Pedestrian Simulation and Gray Clustering Evaluation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shu-wei Wang

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available A congestion phenomenon in a transit station could lead to low transfer efficiency as well as a hidden danger. Effective management of congestion phenomenon shall help to reduce the efficiency decline and danger risk. However, due to the difficulty in acquiring microcosmic pedestrian density, existing researches lack quantitative indicators to reflect congestion degree. This paper aims to solve this problem. Firstly, platform, stair, transfer tunnel, auto fare collection (AFC machine, and security check machine were chosen as key traffic facilities through large amounts of field investigation. Key facilities could be used to reflect the passenger density of a whole station. Secondly, the pedestrian density change law of each key traffic facility was analyzed using pedestrian simulation, and the load degree calculating method of each facility was defined, respectively, afterwards. Taking pedestrian density as basic data and gray clustering evaluation as algorithm, an index called Transit Station Congestion Index (TSCI was constructed to reflect the congestion degree of transit stations. Finally, an evaluation demonstration was carried out with five typical transit transfer stations in Beijing, and the evaluation results show that TSCI can objectively reflect the congestion degree of transit stations.

  14. Impact of Train Schedule on Pedestrian Movement on Stairway at Suburban Rail Transit Station in Mumbai, India

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shah Jiten

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Pedestrian flow takes place in confined environment on stairways under the influence of composition, direction of movement, and schedule of trains. During peak-period, alighting and boarding rate is quite high resulting in very high pedestrian movement from one platform to the other to catch the next train at interchange stations. The transfer of passengers from railway platforms through common undivided stairways becomes difficult, uncomfortable, and unsafe at times when pedestrian flow reaches the capacity level. Understanding of criteria defining quality of flow that affect the effectiveness of facilities like stairways in handling the pedestrian traffic is vital for planning and designing of such facilities to ensure the desired level of service as well as safety in case of emergency. The present paper is based on the study of pedestrian movement on stairways at busy suburban rail transit interchange station at Dadar in Mumbai, India. Pedestrian movements are captured through videography at two stairways and the effect of bidirectional movement on average walking speed is analyzed. The ascending flow in small proportion is found to be more influential in causing speed reduction on undivided stairways. The outcome of the study is useful for capacity and level of service analysis while planning and designing the transit station stairways.

  15. Indices of pedestrian behavior in shopping areas

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Borgers, A.; Timmermans, H.

    2014-01-01

    A number of indices to describe and compare sets of pedestrian routes in shopping environments will be introduced. The first set of indices is related to characteristics of the trajectories and the second set to visiting outlets. These statistics can be used to assess the performance of models

  16. Evaluation of users' satisfaction on pedestrian facilities using pair-wise comparison approach

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zainol, R; Ahmad, F; Nordin, N A; Aripin, A W M

    2014-01-01

    Global climate change issues demand people of the world to change the way they live today. Thus, current cities need to be redeveloped towards less use of carbon in their day to day operations. Pedestrianized environment is one of the approaches used in reducing carbon foot print in cities. Heritage cities are the first to be looked into since they were built in the era in which motorized vehicles were minimal. Therefore, the research explores users' satisfaction on assessment of physical attributes of pedestrianization in Melaka Historical City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It aims to examine users' satisfaction on pedestrian facilities provided within the study area using pair wise questionnaire comparison approach. A survey of 200 respondents using random sampling was conducted in six different sites namely Jonker Street, Church Street, Kota Street, Goldsmith Street, Merdeka Street to Taming Sari Tower and Merdeka Street to River Cruise terminal. The survey consists of an assessment tool based on a nine-point scale of users' satisfaction level of pathway properties, zebra pedestrian crossing, street furniture, personal safety, adjacent to traffic flow, aesthetic and amenities. Analytical hierarchical process (AHP) was used to avoid any biasness in analyzing the data collected. Findings show that Merdeka Street to Taming Sari Tower as the street that scores the highest satisfaction level that fulfils all the required needs of a pedestrianized environment. Similar assessment elements can be used to evaluate existing streets in other cities and these criteria should also be used in planning for future cities

  17. Countermeasures in the field of human factors in relation, to pedestrian behaviour, regulations, and law enforcement.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Kraay, J.H.

    1974-01-01

    Existing measures and theoretical studies on pedestrian behavior, regulations, and enforcement are reviewed. Specific consideration is given to: types of crossings; traffic signal effectiveness; bridges and subways; traffic training areas for children; characteristic movements of pedestrian

  18. Walking and child pedestrian injury: a systematic review of built environment correlates of safe walking.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rothman, Linda; Buliung, Ron; Macarthur, Colin; To, Teresa; Howard, Andrew

    2014-02-01

    The child active transportation literature has focused on walking, with little attention to risk associated with increased traffic exposure. This paper reviews the literature related to built environment correlates of walking and pedestrian injury in children together, to broaden the current conceptualization of walkability to include injury prevention. Two independent searches were conducted focused on walking in children and child pedestrian injury within nine electronic databases until March, 2012. Studies were included which: 1) were quantitative 2) set in motorized countries 3) were either urban or suburban 4) investigated specific built environment risk factors 5) had outcomes of either walking in children and/or child pedestrian roadway collisions (ages 0-12). Built environment features were categorized according to those related to density, land use diversity or roadway design. Results were cross-tabulated to identify how built environment features associate with walking and injury. Fifty walking and 35 child pedestrian injury studies were identified. Only traffic calming and presence of playgrounds/recreation areas were consistently associated with more walking and less pedestrian injury. Several built environment features were associated with more walking, but with increased injury. Many features had inconsistent results or had not been investigated for either outcome. The findings emphasise the importance of incorporating safety into the conversation about creating more walkable cities.

  19. A stochastic load model for pedestrian-induced lateral forces on footbridges

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ingólfsson, Einar Thór; Georgakis, Christos

    2011-01-01

    to support their applicability. Recently, an extensive experimental campaign was carried out, in which the lateral forces generated by pedestrians during walking on a laterally moving treadmill were determined for various combinations of lateral frequencies (0.33–1.07 Hz) and amplitudes (4.5–48 mm...... between limited and excessive lateral vibrations occurs for a small increase in the number of people occupying the bridge. This disproportionate increase in the lateral vibration amplitude is caused by a dynamic interaction between the pedestrian and the laterally moving structure, although the governing...

  20. Game theory in models of pedestrian room evacuation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bouzat, S.; Kuperman, M. N.

    2014-03-01

    We analyze the pedestrian evacuation of a rectangular room with a single door considering a lattice gas scheme with the addition of behavioral aspects of the pedestrians. The movement of the individuals is based on random and rational choices and is affected by conflicts between two or more agents that want to advance to the same position. Such conflicts are solved according to certain rules closely related to the concept of strategies in game theory, cooperation and defection. We consider game rules analogous to those from the Prisoner's Dilemma and Stag Hunt games, with payoffs associated to the probabilities of the individuals to advance to the selected site. We find that, even when defecting is the rational choice for any agent, under certain conditions, cooperators can take advantage from mutual cooperation and leave the room more rapidly than defectors.

  1. Time-to-collision analysis of pedestrian and pedal-cycle accidents for the development of autonomous emergency braking systems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lenard, James; Welsh, Ruth; Danton, Russell

    2018-06-01

    The aim of this study was to describe the position of pedestrians and pedal cyclists relative to the striking vehicle in the 3 s before impact. This information is essential for the development of effective autonomous emergency braking systems and relevant test conditions for consumer ratings. The UK RAIDS-OTS study provided 175 pedestrian and 127 pedal-cycle cases based on in-depth, at-scene investigations of a representative sample of accidents in 2000-2010. Pedal cyclists were scattered laterally more widely than pedestrians (90% of cyclists within around ±80° compared to ±20° for pedestrians), however their distance from the striking vehicle in the seconds before impact was no greater (90% of cyclists within 42 m at 3 s compared to 50 m for pedestrians). This data is consistent with a greater involvement of slow moving vehicles in cycle accidents. The implication of the results is that AEB systems for cyclists require almost complete 180° side-to-side vision but do not need a longer distance range than for pedestrians. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  2. Underground pedestrian routes as an option for arranging the transfer from one type of public transport to another

    Science.gov (United States)

    Glozman, O.

    2017-10-01

    The article highlights the issues of pedestrian movements within cities and focuses on the architectural and planning organization of transfer between two types of public transport. The amount of time citizens lose on the pedestrian sections of their way from home to work were analyzed. The article describes factors that influence the speed and the comfort of pedestrian movements as well as provides rationalization for connecting two types of transport in the underground space. The article also touches upon the issue of the negative cost impact caused by excessive time losses, including the ones that appear on the pedestrian sections of the route. Architectural methods that may ease a pedestrian’s psychological adaptation to the underground space are listed in the article. The results of experimental designing that prove the reduction of the travel time by forming underground pedestrian ways in cities were described. The article features the model of a multi-functional underground space under Serpukhovskaya Zastava square in Moscow. It is noted that pedestrian routes in the cities which do not allow easy movement on the above-the-surface space provide comfortable movement for the citizens.

  3. Brake reactions of distracted drivers to pedestrian Forward Collision Warning systems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lubbe, Nils

    2017-06-01

    Forward Collision Warning (FCW) can be effective in directing driver attention towards a conflict and thereby aid in preventing or mitigating collisions. FCW systems aiming at pedestrian protection have been introduced onto the market, yet an assessment of their safety benefits depends on the accurate modeling of driver reactions when the system is activated. This study contributes by quantifying brake reaction time and brake behavior (deceleration levels and jerk) to compare the effectiveness of an audio-visual warning only, an added haptic brake pulse warning, and an added Head-Up Display in reducing the frequency of collisions with pedestrians. Further, this study provides a detailed data set suited for the design of assessment methods for car-to-pedestrian FCW systems. Brake response characteristics were measured for heavily distracted drivers who were subjected to a single FCW event in a high-fidelity driving simulator. The drivers maintained a self-regulated speed of 30km/h in an urban area, with gaze direction diverted from the forward roadway by a secondary task. Collision rates and brake reaction times differed significantly across FCW settings. Brake pulse warnings resulted in the lowest number of collisions and the shortest brake reaction times (mean 0.8s, SD 0.29s). Brake jerk and deceleration were independent of warning type. Ninety percent of drivers exceeded a maximum deceleration of 3.6m/s 2 and a jerk of 5.3m/s 3 . Brake pulse warning was the most effective FCW interface for preventing collisions. In addition, this study presents the data required for driver modeling for car-to-pedestrian FCW similar to Euro NCAP's 2015 car-to-car FCW assessment. Practical applications: Vehicle manufacturers should consider the introduction of brake pulse warnings to their FCW systems. Euro NCAP could introduce an assessment that quantifies the safety benefits of pedestrian FCW systems and thereby aid the proliferation of effective systems. Copyright © 2017

  4. Accidental and retrospective dosimetry using TL method

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Mesterházy, D.; Osvay, M.; Kovács, A.; Kelemen, A.

    2012-01-01

    Retrospective dosimetry is one of the most important tools of accidental dosimetry for dose estimation when dose measurement was not planned. In the affected area many objects can be applied as natural dosimeters. The paper discusses our recent investigations on various electronic components and common salt (NaCl) having useful thermoluminescence (TL) properties. Among materials investigated the electronic components of cell phones seem promising for retrospective dosimetry purposes, having high TL responses, proper glow curve peaks and the intensity of TL peaks vs. gamma dose received provided nearly linear response in the dose range of 10 mGy–1.5 Gy. - Highlights: ► Electronic components and common salt were investigated for accidental and retrospective dosimetry. ► SMD resistors seem promising for retrospective dosimetry purposes. ► Table salt can be used effectively for accidental dosimetry purposes, as well.

  5. Methodological Analysis about the Potential Avoidabilty of Motor Vehicles Colliding Against Pedestrians in Urban Areas

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Cabrerizo Sinca, J.; Campos Cacheda, J.M.; Perez Diez, F.

    2016-07-01

    The main motivation of the authors of this article is to establish a rigorous definition of the potential capacity that a motor vehicle driver has to avoid a collision against a pedestrian. Henceforth we will call this capacity avoidability. To calculate the avoidability, it is necessary to analyze time, distance and itinerary, initial position of the pedestrian when exposed to the risk, initial speed; theoretical maximum speed developed by the vehicle and road limit speed; the driver’s reaction time and the influence of the environment; and the interrelation of the initial positions of vehicle and pedestrian with respect to the transversal axis of the road. The definition, categorized by variables, of a driver’s ability to avoid run over a pedestrian in an urban area has an evident usefulness: it allows knowing the influence of the initial speed of a vehicle as an isolated variable and the importance of the road limit speed in the ability to prevent an accident. (Author)

  6. Detection scheme for a partially occluded pedestrian based on occluded depth in lidar-radar sensor fusion

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kwon, Seong Kyung; Hyun, Eugin; Lee, Jin-Hee; Lee, Jonghun; Son, Sang Hyuk

    2017-11-01

    Object detections are critical technologies for the safety of pedestrians and drivers in autonomous vehicles. Above all, occluded pedestrian detection is still a challenging topic. We propose a new detection scheme for occluded pedestrian detection by means of lidar-radar sensor fusion. In the proposed method, the lidar and radar regions of interest (RoIs) have been selected based on the respective sensor measurement. Occluded depth is a new means to determine whether an occluded target exists or not. The occluded depth is a region projected out by expanding the longitudinal distance with maintaining the angle formed by the outermost two end points of the lidar RoI. The occlusion RoI is the overlapped region made by superimposing the radar RoI and the occluded depth. The object within the occlusion RoI is detected by the radar measurement information and the occluded object is estimated as a pedestrian based on human Doppler distribution. Additionally, various experiments are performed in detecting a partially occluded pedestrian in outdoor as well as indoor environments. According to experimental results, the proposed sensor fusion scheme has much better detection performance compared to the case without our proposed method.

  7. Assessment of Integrated Pedestrian Protection Systems with Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) and Passive Safety Components.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Edwards, Mervyn; Nathanson, Andrew; Carroll, Jolyon; Wisch, Marcus; Zander, Oliver; Lubbe, Nils

    2015-01-01

    Autonomous emergency braking (AEB) systems fitted to cars for pedestrians have been predicted to offer substantial benefit. On this basis, consumer rating programs-for example, the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP)-are developing rating schemes to encourage fitment of these systems. One of the questions that needs to be answered to do this fully is how the assessment of the speed reduction offered by the AEB is integrated with the current assessment of the passive safety for mitigation of pedestrian injury. Ideally, this should be done on a benefit-related basis. The objective of this research was to develop a benefit-based methodology for assessment of integrated pedestrian protection systems with AEB and passive safety components. The method should include weighting procedures to ensure that it represents injury patterns from accident data and replicates an independently estimated benefit of AEB. A methodology has been developed to calculate the expected societal cost of pedestrian injuries, assuming that all pedestrians in the target population (i.e., pedestrians impacted by the front of a passenger car) are impacted by the car being assessed, taking into account the impact speed reduction offered by the car's AEB (if fitted) and the passive safety protection offered by the car's frontal structure. For rating purposes, the cost for the assessed car is normalized by comparing it to the cost calculated for a reference car. The speed reductions measured in AEB tests are used to determine the speed at which each pedestrian in the target population will be impacted. Injury probabilities for each impact are then calculated using the results from Euro NCAP pedestrian impactor tests and injury risk curves. These injury probabilities are converted into cost using "harm"-type costs for the body regions tested. These costs are weighted and summed. Weighting factors were determined using accident data from Germany and Great Britain and an independently

  8. Firearms and accidental deaths: Evidence from the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Levine, Phillip B; McKnight, Robin

    2017-12-08

    Exposure to firearms increased substantially after the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and 6 adults were killed. Gun sales spiked by 3 million, on the basis of the increase in the number of background checks for firearm purchases. Google searches for buying and cleaning guns increased. We used Vital Statistics mortality data to examine whether a spike in accidental firearm deaths occurred at the same time as the greater exposure to firearms. We also assessed whether the increase in these deaths was larger in those states where the spike in gun sales per capita was larger. We find that an additional 60 deaths overall, including 20 children, resulted from unintentional shootings in the immediate aftermath of Sandy Hook. Copyright © 2017 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.

  9. A Pedestrian Dead Reckoning System Integrating Low-Cost MEMS Inertial Sensors and GPS Receiver

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jin-feng Li

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available The body-mounted inertial systems for pedestrian navigation do not require any preinstalled facilities and can run autonomously. The advantages over other technologies make it especially attractive for the applications such as first responders, military and consumer markets. The hardware platform integrating the low-cost, low-power and small-size MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems inertial sensors and GPS (global positioning system receiver is proposed. When the satellite signals are available, the location of the pedestrian is directly obtained from the GPS receiver. The inertial sensors are the complement of the GPS receiver in places where the GPS signals are not available, such as indoors, urban canyons and places under dense foliages. The height tracking is achieved by the barometer. The proposed PDR (pedestrian dead reckoning algorithm is real-timely implemented in the platform. The simple but effective step detection and step length estimation method are realized to reduce the computation and memory requirements on the microprocessor. A complementary filter is proposed to fuse the data from the accelerometer, gyroscope and digital compass for decreasing the heading error, which is the main error source in positioning. The reliability and accuracy of the proposed system is verified by field pedestrian walking tests in outdoors and indoors. The positioning error is less than 4% of the total traveled distance. The results indicate that the pedestrian dead reckoning system is able to provide satisfactory tracking performance.

  10. New safety systems for better impact shock protection of pedestrians; Neue Sicherheitssysteme fuer besseren Fussgaengerschutz

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Buechling, J.

    2005-06-01

    From October 2005, new vehicles in the European Union must be equipped successively with impact shock protection systems for pedestrians. There are many different concepts and solutions, from optimised front ends and flexible hoods to outside airbags, flexible shock absorbers and systems to prevent rolling over pedestrians. (orig.)

  11. Empirical Behavioral Models to Support Alternative Tools for the Analysis of Mixed-Priority Pedestrian-Vehicle Interaction in a Highway Capacity Context

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rouphail, Nagui M.

    2011-01-01

    This paper presents behavioral-based models for describing pedestrian gap acceptance at unsignalized crosswalks in a mixed-priority environment, where some drivers yield and some pedestrians cross in gaps. Logistic regression models are developed to predict the probability of pedestrian crossings as a function of vehicle dynamics, pedestrian assertiveness, and other factors. In combination with prior work on probabilistic yielding models, the results can be incorporated in a simulation environment, where they can more fully describe the interaction of these two modes. The approach is intended to supplement HCM analytical procedure for locations where significant interaction occurs between drivers and pedestrians, including modern roundabouts. PMID:21643488

  12. Bus Stops and Pedestrian-Motor Vehicle Collisions in Lima, Peru: A Matched Case-Control Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Quistberg, D. Alex; Koepsell, Thomas D.; Johnston, Brian D.; Boyle, Linda Ng; Miranda, J. Jaime; Ebel, Beth E.

    2015-01-01

    Objective To evaluate the relationship between bus stop characteristics and pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions. Design Matched case-control study where the units of study were pedestrian crossing. Setting Random sample of 11 police commissaries in Lima, Peru. Data collection occurred from February, 2011 to September, 2011. Participants 97 intersection cases representing 1,134 collisions and 40 mid-block cases representing 469 collisions that occurred between October, 2010 and January, 2011 and their matched controls. Main Exposures Presence of a bus stop and specific bus stop characteristics. Main Outcome Occurrence of a pedestrian-motor vehicle collision. Results Intersections with bus stops were three times more likely to have a pedestrian-vehicle collision (OR 3.28, 95% CI 1.53-7.03), relative to intersections without bus stops. Both formal and informal bus stops were associated with a higher odds of a collision at intersections (OR 6.23, 95% CI 1.76-22.0 and OR 2.98, 1.37-6.49). At mid-block sites, bus stops on a bus-dedicated transit lane were also associated with collision risk (OR 2.36, 95% CI 1.02-5.42). All bus stops were located prior to the intersection, contrary to practices in most high income countries. Conclusions In urban Lima, the presence of a bus stop was associated with a three-fold increase in risk of a pedestrian collision. The highly competitive environment among bus companies may provide an economic incentive for risky practices such as dropping off passengers in the middle of traffic and jockeying for position with other buses. Bus stop placement should be considered to improve pedestrian safety. PMID:24357516

  13. Effects of transverse rumble strips on safety of pedestrian crosswalks on rural roads in China.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Pan; Huang, Jia; Wang, Wei; Xu, Chengcheng

    2011-11-01

    The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the impacts of transverse rumble strips in reducing crashes and vehicle speeds at pedestrian crosswalks on rural roads in China. Using crash data reported at 366 sites, the research team conducted an observational before-after study using a comparison group and the Empirical Bayesian (EB) method to evaluate the effectiveness of transverse rumble strips in reducing crashes at pedestrian crosswalks. It was found that transverse rumble strips may reduce expected crash frequency at pedestrian crosswalks by 25%. The research team collected more than 15,000 speed observations at 12 sites. The speed data analysis results show that transverse rumble strips significantly reduce vehicle speeds in vicinity of pedestrian crosswalks on rural roads with posted speed limits of 60 km/h and 80 km/h. On average, the mean speed at pedestrian crosswalks declined 9.2 km/h on roads with a speed limit of 60 km/h; and 11.9 km/h on roads with a speed limit of 80 km/h. The 85th percentile speed declined 9.1 km/h on roads with a speed limit of 60 km/h; and 12.0 km/h on roads with a speed limit of 80 km/h. However, the speed reduction impacts were not found to be statistically significant for the pedestrian crosswalk on the road with a speed limit of 40 km/h. The study also looked extensively at the influence area of transverse rumble strips on rural roads. Speed profiles developed in this study show that the influence area of transverse rumble strips is generally less than 0.3 km. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  14. Simulation of Cognitive Pedestrian Agents Crowds in Crisis Situations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Margaret Lyell

    2006-06-01

    Full Text Available In crisis situations in an urban environment, first responder teams often must deal with crowds of people. Consider the case of a building fire in a dense city environment. People may be injured; walkways may be blocked, with fire equipment attempting to reach the scene. Crowd behavior can become an issue when trying to reach the injured, ensure safety and restore conditions to normal. The motivations of pedestrians that form the crowd can vary. Some are there because they are curious about the crisis situation. Others, attending to their individual concerns, may have found themselves in the 'wrong' location. They may be trying to leave the area, but the density of people as well as the spatial layout of the walkways may be impeding their progress. Other individuals, unaware of the fire, may be attempting to reach their intended destinations that happen to be near the crisis area, thus adding to crowd congestion. With a model of crowd behavior, effective strategies for resource usage in managing crowd behavior can be developed. Our approach to this problem is that of agent-based modeling and simulation. We develop a cognitive pedestrian agent model. Utilizing this model, we simulate crowd behavior in a 'city fire' scenario. Characteristics of crowd behavior with different pedestrian personality mixes and a strategy for crowd management are investigated

  15. Quantification of the level of crowdedness for pedestrian movements

    Science.gov (United States)

    Duives, Dorine C.; Daamen, Winnie; Hoogendoorn, Serge P.

    2015-06-01

    Within the realm of pedestrian research numerous measures have been proposed to estimate the level of crowdedness experienced by pedestrians. However, within the field of pedestrian traffic flow modelling there does not seem to be consensus on the question which of these measures performs best. This paper shows that the shape and scatter within the resulting fundamental diagrams differs a lot depending on the measure of crowdedness used. The main aim of the paper is to establish the advantages and disadvantages of the currently existing measures to quantify crowdedness in order to evaluate which measures provide both accurate and consistent results. The assessment is not only based on the theoretical differences, but also on the qualitative and quantitative differences between the resulting fundamental diagrams computed using the crowdedness measures on one and the same data set. The qualitative and quantitative functioning of the classical Grid-based measure is compared to with the X-T measure, an Exponentially Weighted Distance measure, and a Voronoi-Diagram measure. The consistency of relating these measures for crowdedness to the two macroscopic flow variables velocity and flow, the computational efficiency and the amount of scatter present within the fundamental diagrams produced by the implementation of the different measures are reviewed. It is found that the Voronoi-Diagram and X-T measure are the most efficient and consistent measures for crowdedness.

  16. The influence of passenger car front shape on pedestrian injury risk observed from German in-depth accident data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Guibing; Lyons, Mathew; Wang, Bingyu; Yang, Jikuang; Otte, Dietmar; Simms, Ciaran

    2017-04-01

    Quantified relationships between passenger car front shape and pedestrian injury risk derived from accident data are sparse, especially considering the significant recent changes in car front design. The purpose of this paper is therefore to investigate the detailed effects of passenger car front shape on injury risk to a pedestrian's head, thorax, pelvis and leg in the event of a vehicle pedestrian impact. Firstly, an accident sample of 594 pedestrian cases captured during 2000-2015 from the German In-Depth Accident Study (GIDAS) database was employed. Multicollinearity diagnostic statistics were then used to detect multicollinearity between the predictors. Following this, logistic regression was applied to quantify the effects of passenger car front shape on injury risks while controlling for impact speed and pedestrian age. Results indicate that the bumper lower depth (BLD), bumper lower height (BLH), bumper upper height (BUH) and normalised bumper lower/upper height (NBLH/NBUH) are statistically significant for AIS2+ leg injury risk. The normalised bonnet leading edge height (NBLEH) has a statistically significant influence on AIS2+ femur/pelvis injury occurrence. The passenger car front shape did not show statistical significance for AIS3+ thorax and head injuries. The impact speed and pedestrian age are generally significant factors influencing AIS2+ leg and pelvis injuries, and AIS3+ thorax and head injuries. However, when head impacts are fixed on the central windscreen region both pedestrian age and impact speed are not statistically significant for AIS3+ head injury. For quantified effects, when controlling for speed, age and BUH, an average 7% and 6% increase in AIS2+ leg injury odds was observed for every 1cm increase in BLD and BLH respectively; 1cm increase in BUH results in a 7% decrease in AIS2+ leg injury odds when the BLD or BLH are fixed respectively (again controlling for impact speed and pedestrian age); the average AIS2+ femur/pelvis injury

  17. Analysing the Wrongness of Killing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Di Nucci, Ezio

    2014-01-01

    This article provides an in-depth analysis of the wrongness of killing by comparing different versions of three influential views: the traditional view that killing is always wrong; the liberal view that killing is wrong if and only if the victim does not want to be killed; and Don Marquis‟ future...... of value account of the wrongness of killing. In particular, I illustrate the advantages that a basic version of the liberal view and a basic version of the future of value account have over competing alternatives. Still, ultimately none of the views analysed here are satisfactory; but the different...

  18. The accuracy and timing of pedestrian warnings at intersections: the acceptance from drivers and their preferences

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    de Boer, Josine; Chaziris, Antonios; Vreeswijk, Jacob Dirk; Bie, Jing; van Arem, Bart; Abadi, A.; Bauer e.a., D.

    2010-01-01

    The safety of vulnerable road users at traffic intersections is critical. Driver assistance systems can improve safety but have to rely on accurate detection of hazardous situations. Given the complexity of pedestrian movement, detection of pedestrian presence and prediction of their behaviour are

  19. Experimental and modeling study on relation of pedestrian step length and frequency under different headways

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zeng, Guang; Cao, Shuchao; Liu, Chi; Song, Weiguo

    2018-06-01

    It is important to study pedestrian stepping behavior and characteristics for facility design and pedestrian flow study due to pedestrians' bipedal movement. In this paper, data of steps are extracted based on trajectories of pedestrians from a single-file experiment. It is found that step length and step frequency will decrease 75% and 33%, respectively, when global density increases from 0.46 ped/m to 2.28 ped/m. With the increment of headway, they will first increase and then remain constant when the headway is beyond 1.16 m and 0.91 m, respectively. Step length and frequency under different headways can be described well by normal distributions. Meanwhile, relationships between step length and frequency under different headways exist. Step frequency decreases with the increment of step length. However, the decrease tendencies depend on headways as a whole. And there are two decrease tendencies: when the headway is between about 0.6 m and 1.0 m, the decrease rate of the step frequency will increase with the increment of step length; while it will decrease when the headway is beyond about 1.0 m and below about 0.6 m. A model is built based on the experiment results. In fundamental diagrams, the results of simulation agree well with those of experiment. The study can be helpful for understanding pedestrian stepping behavior and designing public facilities.

  20. Prediction of the behavior of pedestrian bridges using computer models

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jonathan José Cala Monroy

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available Introduction: The present article is aimed to present a brief introduction of the issues related to the low-frequency vibrations, by indicating human walking as its relevant source which affecting structures of the footbridges and is turned into inconveniences to the pedestrian traffic. Objective: The main objective of this research paper is to explain the most common methods used by engineers for the evaluation of the vibrations and their effects as well as their limitations, furthermore a computer modeling technique was developed in order to approach it to the reality of the phenomenon of vibrations in pedestrian bridges. Methodology: The present work was divided into main phases: The first phase was a conceptual bibliographical review of the subject of floor vibrations by focusing on the use of the Design Guide No. 11 of the American Institute of Steel Constructions, with regard to the second phase, it had to do with the developing of a computer model which included a definition of variables, the elaboration of a dynamic model of the structure, the calibration of the model, the evaluation of the parameters under study and the analysis of results and conclusions. Results: Consequently, and according to the preliminary stages, the results of the acceleration were obtained to different frequencies and to different degrees of damping by observing that the chosen sample was potentially susceptible between four and eight Hz ranges, hence when resonances took place the mentioned structure presented a peak acceleration above the threshold recommended by human beings comfort related to pedestrian bridges. Conclusions: To conclude it can be said that through the appropriate modeling techniques and finite elements convenient and reliable results should be accomplished that leading the design process of structures as pedestrian bridges.

  1. Hidden Markov Model-based Pedestrian Navigation System using MEMS Inertial Sensors

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhang Yingjun

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, a foot-mounted pedestrian navigation system using MEMS inertial sensors is implemented, where the zero-velocity detection is abstracted into a hidden Markov model with 4 states and 15 observations. Moreover, an observations extraction algorithm has been developed to extract observations from sensor outputs; sample sets are used to train and optimize the model parameters by the Baum-Welch algorithm. Finally, a navigation system is developed, and the performance of the pedestrian navigation system is evaluated using indoor and outdoor field tests, and the results show that position error is less than 3% of total distance travelled.

  2. Cloning, killing, and identity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McMahan, J

    1999-01-01

    One potentially valuable use of cloning is to provide a source of tissues or organs for transplantation. The most important objection to this use of cloning is that a human clone would be the sort of entity that it would be seriously wrong to kill. I argue that entities of the sort that you and I essentially are do not begin to exist until around the seventh month of fetal gestation. Therefore to kill a clone prior to that would not be to kill someone like you or me but would be only to prevent one of us from existing. And even after one of us begins to exist, the objections to killing it remain comparatively weak until its psychological capacities reach a certain level of maturation. These claims support the permissibility of killing a clone during the early stages of its development in order to use its organs for transplantation. PMID:10226909

  3. Fast and Accurate Pedestrian Detection in a Truck’s Blind Spot Camera

    OpenAIRE

    Van Beeck, Kristof; Goedemé, Toon

    2015-01-01

    We propose a multi-pedestrian detection and tracking framework targeting a specific application: detecting vulnerable road users in a truck’s blind spot zone. Existing safety solutions are not able to handle this problem completely. Therefore we aim to develop an active safety system which warns the truck driver if pedestrians are present in the truck’s blind spot zone, using solely the vision input from the truck’s blind spot camera. This is not a trivial task, since—aside from the large dis...

  4. Últimos perfiles del accidente de trabajo en misión

    OpenAIRE

    Poquet Catalá, Raquel

    2017-01-01

    En este trabajo se analiza desde un punto de vista de la doctrina judicial y jurisprudencial la construcción doctrinal del accidente de trabajo en misión como derivación del accidente de trabajo in itinere y como configuración propia del accidente de trabajo en sí. Así, se procede a la delimitación respecto del accidente in itinere, se realiza un análisis de los requisitos configuradores del mismo, tanto genéricos como específicos, así como la aplicabilidad de la presunción iuris tantum de la...

  5. Empirical study on social groups in pedestrian evacuation dynamics

    Science.gov (United States)

    von Krüchten, Cornelia; Schadschneider, Andreas

    2017-06-01

    Pedestrian crowds often include social groups, i.e. pedestrians that walk together because of social relationships. They show characteristic configurations and influence the dynamics of the entire crowd. In order to investigate the impact of social groups on evacuations we performed an empirical study with pupils. Several evacuation runs with groups of different sizes and different interactions were performed. New group parameters are introduced which allow to describe the dynamics of the groups and the configuration of the group members quantitatively. The analysis shows a possible decrease of evacuation times for large groups due to self-ordering effects. Social groups can be approximated as ellipses that orientate along their direction of motion. Furthermore, explicitly cooperative behaviour among group members leads to a stronger aggregation of group members and an intermittent way of evacuation.

  6. Pedestrian collective motion in competitive room evacuation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Garcimartín, A; Pastor, J M; Martín-Gómez, C; Parisi, D; Zuriguel, I

    2017-09-07

    When a sizable number of people evacuate a room, if the door is not large enough, an accumulation of pedestrians in front of the exit may take place. This is the cause of emerging collective phenomena where the density is believed to be the key variable determining the pedestrian dynamics. Here, we show that when sustained contact among the individuals exists, density is not enough to describe the evacuation, and propose that at least another variable -such as the kinetic stress- is required. We recorded evacuation drills with different degrees of competitiveness where the individuals are allowed to moderately push each other in their way out. We obtain the density, velocity and kinetic stress fields over time, showing that competitiveness strongly affects them and evidencing patterns which have been never observed in previous (low pressure) evacuation experiments. For the highest competitiveness scenario, we detect the development of sudden collective motions. These movements are related to a notable increase of the kinetic stress and a reduction of the velocity towards the door, but do not depend on the density.

  7. Raised crosswalks on entrance to the roundabout-a case study on effectiveness of treatment on pedestrian safety and convenience.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Candappa, Nimmi; Stephan, Karen; Fotheringham, Nicola; Lenné, Michael G; Corben, Bruce

    2014-01-01

    A common concern in the use of a roundabout is providing adequately for the pedestrian. This unique roundabout layout, which introduces raised crosswalks directly at the roundabout entrance, as opposed to at a car length back, aims at improving safety and convenience for pedestrians at roundabouts. A preliminary evaluation of the layout was undertaken to establish its effectiveness in meeting study objectives. A quasi-experimental before-and-after study design was used to compare speeds on approach and immediately prior to the crossing to ascertain potential impact speed and implications for pedestrian safety. Compliance to crossing and crossing time were also compared in relation to safety and convenience outcomes. A questionnaire assessed pedestrian perception of the safety and convenience at the roundabout before and after treatment. Results from this case study indicate that mean approach speeds (free speeds 30 m from crossing) reduced from 32.7 to 30.7 km/h and immediately prior to crossing, mean speeds reduced from 19.1 to 16.3 km/h. There was also a marked reduction in proportions of vehicles traveling at speeds that could elevate risk to pedestrians. Total crossing time after treatment reduced by around 4 s, and crossing compliance increased from approximately half to approximately 90 percent. Survey of pedestrians indicated positive response to the perceived safety and convenience posttreatment. Preliminary results of the case study suggest positive safety and convenience outcomes. Implications for pedestrian safety include less exposure to traffic and lower risk of serious injury, particularly for elderly pedestrians; convenience outcomes include shorter waiting times to cross and greater compliance to the crossing. A larger study is required to substantiate the findings.

  8. Effects of mobile phone distraction on pedestrians' crossing behavior and visual attention allocation at a signalized intersection: An outdoor experimental study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jiang, Kang; Ling, Feiyang; Feng, Zhongxiang; Ma, Changxi; Kumfer, Wesley; Shao, Chen; Wang, Kun

    2018-06-01

    With the rapid growth in mobile phone use worldwide, traffic safety experts have begun to consider the impact of mobile phone distractions on pedestrian crossing safety. This study sought to investigate how mobile phone distractions (music distraction, phone conversation distraction and text distraction) affect the behavior of pedestrians while they are crossing the street. An outdoor-environment experiment was conducted among 28 college student pedestrians. Two HD videos and an eye tracker were employed to record and analyze crossing behavior and visual attention allocation. The results of the research showed that the three mobile phone distractions cause different levels of impairment to pedestrians' crossing performance, with the greatest effect from text distraction, followed by phone conversation distraction and music distraction. Pedestrians distracted by music initiate crossing later, have increased pupil diameter, and reduce their scanning frequency, fixation points and fixation times toward traffic signal area priorities. In addition to the above effects, pedestrians distracted by phone conversation cross the street more slowly, direct fewer fixation points to the right traffic area, and spend less fixation time and lower average fixation duration on the left traffic area. Moreover, pedestrians distracted by texting look left and right less often and switch, distribute and maintain less visual attention on the traffic environment. These findings may inform researchers, policy makers, and pedestrians. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. Prescription medicine use by pedestrians and the risk of injurious road traffic crashes: A case-crossover study.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mélanie Née

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available While some medicinal drugs have been found to affect driving ability, no study has investigated whether a relationship exists between these medicines and crashes involving pedestrians. The aim of this study was to explore the association between the use of medicinal drugs and the risk of being involved in a road traffic crash as a pedestrian.Data from 3 French nationwide databases were matched. We used the case-crossover design to control for time-invariant factors by using each case as its own control. To perform multivariable analysis and limit false-positive results, we implemented a bootstrap version of Lasso. To avoid the effect of unmeasured time-varying factors, we varied the length of the washout period from 30 to 119 days before the crash. The matching procedure led to the inclusion of 16,458 pedestrians involved in an injurious road traffic crash from 1 July 2005 to 31 December 2011. We found 48 medicine classes with a positive association with the risk of crash, with median odds ratios ranging from 1.12 to 2.98. Among these, benzodiazepines and benzodiazepine-related drugs, antihistamines, and anti-inflammatory and antirheumatic drugs were among the 10 medicines most consumed by the 16,458 pedestrians. Study limitations included slight overrepresentation of pedestrians injured in more severe crashes, lack of information about self-medication and the use of over-the-counter drugs, and lack of data on amount of walking.Therapeutic classes already identified as impacting the ability to drive, such as benzodiazepines and antihistamines, are also associated with an increased risk of pedestrians being involved in a road traffic crash. This study on pedestrians highlights the necessity of improving awareness of the effect of these medicines on this category of road user.

  10. Evaluation of biofidelity of THUMS pedestrian model under a whole-body impact conditions with a generic sedan buck.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wu, Taotao; Kim, Taewung; Bollapragada, Varun; Poulard, David; Chen, Huipeng; Panzer, Matthew B; Forman, Jason L; Crandall, Jeff R; Pipkorn, Bengt

    2017-05-29

    The goal of this study was to evaluate the biofidelity of the Total Human Model for Safety (THUMS; Ver. 4.01) pedestrian finite element models (PFEM) in a whole-body pedestrian impact condition using a well-characterized generic pedestrian buck model. The biofidelity of THUMS PFEM was evaluated with respect to data from 3 full-scale postmortem human subject (PMHS) pedestrian impact tests, in which a pedestrian buck laterally struck the subjects using a pedestrian buck at 40 km/h. The pedestrian model was scaled to match the anthropometry of the target subjects and then positioned to match the pre-impact postures of the target subjects based on the 3-dimensional motion tracking data obtained during the experiments. An objective rating method was employed to quantitatively evaluate the correlation between the responses of the models and the PMHS. Injuries in the models were predicted both probabilistically and deterministically using empirical injury risk functions and strain measures, respectively, and compared with those of the target PMHS. In general, the model exhibited biofidelic kinematic responses (in the Y-Z plane) regarding trajectories (International Organization for Standardization [ISO] ratings: Y = 0.90 ± 0.11, Z = 0.89 ± 0.09), linear resultant velocities (ISO ratings: 0.83 ± 0.07), accelerations (ISO ratings: Y = 0.58 ± 0.11, Z = 0.52 ± 0.12), and angular velocities (ISO ratings: X = 0.48 ± 0.13) but exhibited stiffer leg responses and delayed head responses compared to those of the PMHS. This indicates potential biofidelity issues with the PFEM for regions below the knee and in the neck. The model also demonstrated comparable reaction forces at the buck front-end regions to those from the PMHS tests. The PFEM generally predicted the injuries that the PMHS sustained but overestimated injuries in the ankle and leg regions. Based on the data considered, the THUMS PFEM was considered to be biofidelic for this pedestrian impact condition and vehicle

  11. Application of demographic analysis to pedestrian safety : [project summary].

    Science.gov (United States)

    2017-05-01

    FDOT has been working diligently to improve its facilities for pedestrians and cyclists, including : initiatives like the Complete Streets Policy and Implementation Plan. However, one of the : challenges facing FDOT is targeting those areas of greate...

  12. Analysis of accidental UF6 releases

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Fan Yumao; Tan Rui; Gao Qifa

    2012-01-01

    As interim substance in the nuclear fuel enrichment process, Uranium Hexafluoride (UF 6 ) is widely applied in nuclear processing, enrichment and fuel fabrication plants. Because of its vivid chemical characteristics and special radiological hazard and chemical toxicity, great attention must be paid to accident of UF 6 leakage. The chemical reactions involved in UF 6 release processes were introduced, therewith potential release styles, pathways and characteristics of diffusion were analyzed. The results indicated that the accidental release process of UF 6 is not a simple passive diffusion. So, specific atmospheric diffusion model related to UF 6 releases need be used in order to analyze and evaluate accurately the accidental consequences. (authors)

  13. A Pilot Study of Pedestrians with Visual Impairments Detecting Traffic Gaps and Surges Containing Hybrid Vehicles.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Emerson, Robert Wall; Naghshineh, Koorosh; Hapeman, Julie; Wiener, William

    2011-03-01

    The increasing number of hybrid and quiet internal combustion engine vehicles may impact the travel abilities of pedestrians who are blind. Pedestrians who rely on auditory cues for structuring their travel may face challenges in making crossing decisions in the presence of quiet vehicles. This article describes results of initial studies looking at the crossing decisions of pedestrians who are blind at an uncontrolled crossing (no traffic control) and a light controlled intersection. The presence of hybrid vehicles was a factor in each situation. At the uncontrolled crossing, Toyota hybrids were most difficult to detect but crossing decisions were made more often in small gaps ended by a Honda hybrid. These effects were seen only at speed under 20 mph. At the light controlled intersection, parallel surges of traffic were most difficult to detect when made up only of a Ford Escape hybrid. Results suggest that more controlled studies of vehicle characteristics impacting crossing decisions of pedestrians who are blind are warranted.

  14. A Pilot Study of Pedestrians with Visual Impairments Detecting Traffic Gaps and Surges Containing Hybrid Vehicles

    Science.gov (United States)

    Emerson, Robert Wall; Naghshineh, Koorosh; Hapeman, Julie; Wiener, William

    2010-01-01

    The increasing number of hybrid and quiet internal combustion engine vehicles may impact the travel abilities of pedestrians who are blind. Pedestrians who rely on auditory cues for structuring their travel may face challenges in making crossing decisions in the presence of quiet vehicles. This article describes results of initial studies looking at the crossing decisions of pedestrians who are blind at an uncontrolled crossing (no traffic control) and a light controlled intersection. The presence of hybrid vehicles was a factor in each situation. At the uncontrolled crossing, Toyota hybrids were most difficult to detect but crossing decisions were made more often in small gaps ended by a Honda hybrid. These effects were seen only at speed under 20 mph. At the light controlled intersection, parallel surges of traffic were most difficult to detect when made up only of a Ford Escape hybrid. Results suggest that more controlled studies of vehicle characteristics impacting crossing decisions of pedestrians who are blind are warranted. PMID:21379367

  15. Modeling the impact of pedestrian behavior diversity on traffic dynamics at a crosswalk with push button

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xie, Dong-Fan; Zhao, Xiao-Mei; Li, Xin-Gang; Zhu, Tai-Lang

    2016-01-01

    Crosswalk with push button is prevalent in lots of cities for the purpose of promoting the efficiency of the crosswalk, and thus the delays of both vehicles and pedestrians can be reduced. This strategy has been confirmed to be effective in several developed countries. However, it is a pity that application of push button is aborted in some cities in China. In this work, diverse behaviors of vehicles and pedestrians are analyzed and discussed. Then, a microscopic model is developed by incorporating the interaction between vehicles and pedestrians. Numerical simulations are performed to reveal the characteristics of traffic flow and the efficiency of the signal control strategy. Also, the impacts of risker proportion and button reaction time, as well as the impacts of various behaviors as mass behavior, the patience of pedestrian and push button habit are investigated. It is expected that the results will be helpful to the strategy design of a signalized crosswalk in such developing countries as China.

  16. Survey about pedestrian safety and attitudes toward automated traffic enforcement in Washington, D.C.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cicchino, Jessica B; Wells, Joann K; McCartt, Anne T

    2014-01-01

    Pedestrians represent more than one third of all traffic deaths in Washington, D.C. The District plans to expand its long-standing automated traffic enforcement program in 2013 from speed and red light cameras to cameras to enforce pedestrian right-of-way laws at crosswalks and stop sign laws. This study collected information on the opinions, behaviors, and knowledge of D.C. residents related to camera enforcement and pedestrian safety issues. A telephone survey of 801 adult D.C. residents was conducted in November 2012 with approximately equal numbers of respondents in each of D.C.'s eight wards. Quotas were used to ensure that the sample was representative of the demographic characteristics of adults in each ward. For analyses combining responses across the wards, data were weighted to correspond with the demographic characteristics of adults in the city. Most respondents believed that drivers speeding, running red lights, running stop signs, and not stopping for pedestrians are serious threats to their safety. Respondents strongly supported the speed and red light camera programs, with 76 percent of respondents favoring speed cameras and 87 percent favoring red light cameras. Support was more limited for the camera enforcement that was not yet in place at the time of the survey, with 50 percent of respondents favoring stop sign cameras and 47 percent of respondents favoring crosswalk cameras. Twenty-four percent of respondents had not driven a car in D.C. in the past month, and higher proportions of these nondrivers favored speed cameras (90%), stop sign cameras (67%), and crosswalk cameras (59%) than respondents who drove in D.C. in the past month. Respondents who supported camera enforcement cited safety as their main reason. More than 9 in 10 respondents knew that D.C. law requires drivers to stop for pedestrians crossing the street in marked crosswalks at intersections without traffic signals and midblock, but only 54 percent knew that drivers must stop for

  17. Evaluating public space pedestrian accessibility: a GIS approach

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Morar, T.; Bertolini, L.; Radoslav, R.

    2013-01-01

    Public spaces are sources of quality of life in neighborhoods. Seeking to help professionals and municipalities assess how well a public space can be used by the community it serves, this paper presents a GIS-based methodology for evaluating its pedestrian accessibility. The Romanian city of

  18. "Guns do not kill, people do!"

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lemche, Niels Peter

    2011-01-01

    The Bible does not kill, but many people who have read the Bible (in their way) have killed, virtually or in real.......The Bible does not kill, but many people who have read the Bible (in their way) have killed, virtually or in real....

  19. Advanced Emergency Braking Controller Design for Pedestrian Protection Oriented Automotive Collision Avoidance System

    OpenAIRE

    Lie, Guo; Zejian, Ren; Pingshu, Ge; Jing, Chang

    2014-01-01

    Automotive collision avoidance system, which aims to enhance the active safety of the vehicle, has become a hot research topic in recent years. However, most of the current systems ignore the active protection of pedestrian and other vulnerable groups in the transportation system. An advanced emergency braking control system is studied by taking into account the pedestrians and the vehicles. Three typical braking scenarios are defined and the safety situations are assessed by comparing the cu...

  20. Blind's Eye: Employing Google Directions API for Outdoor Navigation of Visually Impaired Pedestrians

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    SABA FEROZMEMON

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available Vision plays a paramount role in our everyday life and assists human in almost every walk of life. The people lacking vision sense require assistance to move freely. The inability of unassisted navigation and orientation in outdoor environments is one of the most important constraints for people with visual impairment. Motivated by this problem, we developed a simplified and user friendly navigation system that allows visually impaired pedestrians to reach their desired outdoor location. We designed a Braille keyboard to allow the blind user to input their destination. The proposed system makes use of Google Directions API (Application Program Interface to generate the right path to a destination. The visually impaired pedestrians have to wear a vibration belt to keep them on the track. The evaluation exposes shortcomings of Google Directions API when used for navigating the visually impaired pedestrians in an outdoor environment.

  1. Allegheny County Fatal Accidental Overdoses

    Data.gov (United States)

    Allegheny County / City of Pittsburgh / Western PA Regional Data Center — Fatal accidental overdose incidents in Allegheny County, denoting age, gender, race, drugs present, zip code of incident and zip code of residence. Zip code of...

  2. Micrometeorological simulations to predict the impacts of heat mitigation strategies on pedestrian thermal comfort in a Los Angeles neighborhood

    Science.gov (United States)

    Taleghani, Mohammad; Sailor, David; Ban-Weiss, George A.

    2016-02-01

    The urban heat island impacts the thermal comfort of pedestrians in cities. In this paper, the effects of four heat mitigation strategies on micrometeorology and the thermal comfort of pedestrians were simulated for a neighborhood in eastern Los Angeles County. The strategies investigated include solar reflective ‘cool roofs’, vegetative ‘green roofs’, solar reflective ‘cool pavements’, and increased street-level trees. A series of micrometeorological simulations for an extreme heat day were carried out assuming widespread adoption of each mitigation strategy. Comparing each simulation to the control simulation assuming current land cover for the neighborhood showed that additional street-trees and cool pavements reduced 1.5 m air temperature, while cool and green roofs mostly provided cooling at heights above pedestrian level. However, cool pavements increased reflected sunlight from the ground to pedestrians at a set of unshaded receptor locations. This reflected radiation intensified the mean radiant temperature and consequently increased physiological equivalent temperature (PET) by 2.2 °C during the day, reducing the thermal comfort of pedestrians. At another set of receptor locations that were on average 5 m from roadways and underneath preexisting tree cover, cool pavements caused significant reductions in surface air temperatures and small changes in mean radiant temperature during the day, leading to decreases in PET of 1.1 °C, and consequent improvements in thermal comfort. For improving thermal comfort of pedestrians during the afternoon in unshaded locations, adding street trees was found to be the most effective strategy. However, afternoon thermal comfort improvements in already shaded locations adjacent to streets were most significant for cool pavements. Green and cool roofs showed the lowest impact on the thermal comfort of pedestrians since they modify the energy balance at roof level, above the height of pedestrians.

  3. Micrometeorological simulations to predict the impacts of heat mitigation strategies on pedestrian thermal comfort in a Los Angeles neighborhood

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Taleghani, Mohammad; Ban-Weiss, George A; Sailor, David

    2016-01-01

    The urban heat island impacts the thermal comfort of pedestrians in cities. In this paper, the effects of four heat mitigation strategies on micrometeorology and the thermal comfort of pedestrians were simulated for a neighborhood in eastern Los Angeles County. The strategies investigated include solar reflective ‘cool roofs’, vegetative ‘green roofs’, solar reflective ‘cool pavements’, and increased street-level trees. A series of micrometeorological simulations for an extreme heat day were carried out assuming widespread adoption of each mitigation strategy. Comparing each simulation to the control simulation assuming current land cover for the neighborhood showed that additional street-trees and cool pavements reduced 1.5 m air temperature, while cool and green roofs mostly provided cooling at heights above pedestrian level. However, cool pavements increased reflected sunlight from the ground to pedestrians at a set of unshaded receptor locations. This reflected radiation intensified the mean radiant temperature and consequently increased physiological equivalent temperature (PET) by 2.2 °C during the day, reducing the thermal comfort of pedestrians. At another set of receptor locations that were on average 5 m from roadways and underneath preexisting tree cover, cool pavements caused significant reductions in surface air temperatures and small changes in mean radiant temperature during the day, leading to decreases in PET of 1.1 °C, and consequent improvements in thermal comfort. For improving thermal comfort of pedestrians during the afternoon in unshaded locations, adding street trees was found to be the most effective strategy. However, afternoon thermal comfort improvements in already shaded locations adjacent to streets were most significant for cool pavements. Green and cool roofs showed the lowest impact on the thermal comfort of pedestrians since they modify the energy balance at roof level, above the height of pedestrians. (letter)

  4. Simulating large-scale pedestrian movement using CA and event driven model: Methodology and case study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Jun; Fu, Siyao; He, Haibo; Jia, Hongfei; Li, Yanzhong; Guo, Yi

    2015-11-01

    Large-scale regional evacuation is an important part of national security emergency response plan. Large commercial shopping area, as the typical service system, its emergency evacuation is one of the hot research topics. A systematic methodology based on Cellular Automata with the Dynamic Floor Field and event driven model has been proposed, and the methodology has been examined within context of a case study involving the evacuation within a commercial shopping mall. Pedestrians walking is based on Cellular Automata and event driven model. In this paper, the event driven model is adopted to simulate the pedestrian movement patterns, the simulation process is divided into normal situation and emergency evacuation. The model is composed of four layers: environment layer, customer layer, clerk layer and trajectory layer. For the simulation of movement route of pedestrians, the model takes into account purchase intention of customers and density of pedestrians. Based on evacuation model of Cellular Automata with Dynamic Floor Field and event driven model, we can reflect behavior characteristics of customers and clerks at the situations of normal and emergency evacuation. The distribution of individual evacuation time as a function of initial positions and the dynamics of the evacuation process is studied. Our results indicate that the evacuation model using the combination of Cellular Automata with Dynamic Floor Field and event driven scheduling can be used to simulate the evacuation of pedestrian flows in indoor areas with complicated surroundings and to investigate the layout of shopping mall.

  5. On the Eikonal equation in the pedestrian flow problem

    Science.gov (United States)

    Felcman, J.; Kubera, P.

    2017-07-01

    We consider the Pedestrian Flow Equations (PFEs) as the coupled system formed by the Eikonal equation and the first order hyperbolic system with the source term. The hyperbolic system consists of the continuity equation and momentum equation of fluid dynamics. Specifying the social and pressure forces in the momentum equation we come to the assumption that each pedestrian is trying to move in a desired direction (e.g. to the exit in the panic situation) with a desired velocity, where his velocity and the direction of movement depend on the density of pedestrians in his neighborhood. In [1] we used the model, where the desired direction of movement is given by the solution of the Eikonal equation (more precisely by the gradient of the solution). Here we avoid the solution of the Eikonal equation, which is the novelty of the paper. Based on the fact that the solution of the Eikonal equation has the meaning of the shortest time to reach the exit, we define explicitly such a function in the framework of the Dijkstra's algorithm for the shortest path in the graph. This is done at the discrete level of the solution. As the graph we use the underlying triangulation, where the norm of each edge is density depending and has the dimension of the time. The numerical examples of the solution of the PFEs with and without the solution of the Eikonal equation are presented.

  6. A Pedestrian Detection Scheme Using a Coherent Phase Difference Method Based on 2D Range-Doppler FMCW Radar

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hyun, Eugin; Jin, Young-Seok; Lee, Jong-Hun

    2016-01-01

    For an automotive pedestrian detection radar system, fast-ramp based 2D range-Doppler Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar is effective for distinguishing between moving targets and unwanted clutter. However, when a weak moving target such as a pedestrian exists together with strong clutter, the pedestrian may be masked by the side-lobe of the clutter even though they are notably separated in the Doppler dimension. To prevent this problem, one popular solution is the use of a windowing scheme with a weighting function. However, this method leads to a spread spectrum, so the pedestrian with weak signal power and slow Doppler may also be masked by the main-lobe of clutter. With a fast-ramp based FMCW radar, if the target is moving, the complex spectrum of the range- Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is changed with a constant phase difference over ramps. In contrast, the clutter exhibits constant phase irrespective of the ramps. Based on this fact, in this paper we propose a pedestrian detection for highly cluttered environments using a coherent phase difference method. By detecting the coherent phase difference from the complex spectrum of the range-FFT, we first extract the range profile of the moving pedestrians. Then, through the Doppler FFT, we obtain the 2D range-Doppler map for only the pedestrian. To test the proposed detection scheme, we have developed a real-time data logging system with a 24 GHz FMCW transceiver. In laboratory tests, we verified that the signal processing results from the proposed method were much better than those expected from the conventional 2D FFT-based detection method. PMID:26805835

  7. A Pedestrian Detection Scheme Using a Coherent Phase Difference Method Based on 2D Range-Doppler FMCW Radar

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eugin Hyun

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available For an automotive pedestrian detection radar system, fast-ramp based 2D range-Doppler Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW radar is effective for distinguishing between moving targets and unwanted clutter. However, when a weak moving target such as a pedestrian exists together with strong clutter, the pedestrian may be masked by the side-lobe of the clutter even though they are notably separated in the Doppler dimension. To prevent this problem, one popular solution is the use of a windowing scheme with a weighting function. However, this method leads to a spread spectrum, so the pedestrian with weak signal power and slow Doppler may also be masked by the main-lobe of clutter. With a fast-ramp based FMCW radar, if the target is moving, the complex spectrum of the range- Fast Fourier Transform (FFT is changed with a constant phase difference over ramps. In contrast, the clutter exhibits constant phase irrespective of the ramps. Based on this fact, in this paper we propose a pedestrian detection for highly cluttered environments using a coherent phase difference method. By detecting the coherent phase difference from the complex spectrum of the range-FFT, we first extract the range profile of the moving pedestrians. Then, through the Doppler FFT, we obtain the 2D range-Doppler map for only the pedestrian. To test the proposed detection scheme, we have developed a real-time data logging system with a 24 GHz FMCW transceiver. In laboratory tests, we verified that the signal processing results from the proposed method were much better than those expected from the conventional 2D FFT-based detection method.

  8. Pedestrian-Vehicle Accidents Reconstruction with PC-Crash®: Sensibility Analysis of Factors Variation

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Martinez Gala, F.

    2016-07-01

    This paper describes the main findings of a study performed by INSIA-UPM about the improvement of the reconstruction process of real world vehicle-pedestrian accidents using PC-Crash® software, aimed to develop a software tool for the estimation of the variability of the collision speed due to the lack of real values of some parameters required during the reconstruction task. The methodology has been based on a sensibility analysis of the factors variation. A total of 9 factors have been analyzed with the objective of identifying which ones were significant. Four of them (pedestrian height, collision angle, hood height and pedestrian-road friction coefficient) were significant and were included in a full factorial experiment with the collision speed as an additional factor in order to obtain a regression model with up to third level interactions. Two different factorial experiments with the same structure have been performed because of pedestrian gender differences. The tool has been created as a collision speed predictor based on the regression models obtained, using the 4 significant factors and the projection distance measured or estimated in the accident site. The tool has been used on the analysis of real-world reconstructed accidents occurred in the city of Madrid (Spain). The results have been adequate in most cases with less than 10% of deviation between the predicted speed and the one estimated in the reconstructions. (Author)

  9. A Macroscopic Approach to the Lane Formation Phenomenon in Pedestrian Counterflow

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xiong, Tao; Zhang, Peng; Wong, S. C.; Shu, Chi-Wang; Zhang, Meng-Ping

    2011-10-01

    We simulate pedestrian counterflow by adopting an optimal path-choice strategy and a recently observed speed-density relationship. Although the whole system is symmetric, the simulation demonstrates the segregation and formation of many walking lanes for two groups of pedestrians. The symmetry breaking is most likely triggered by a small numerical viscosity or “noise", and the segregation is associated with the minimization of travel time. The underlying physics can be compared with the “optimal self-organization" mechanism in Helbing's social force model, by which driven entities in an open system tend to minimize their interaction to enable them to reach some ordering state.

  10. Distracted pedestrian sustains orbital fracture while on cell phone

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Edell AR

    2013-04-01

    Full Text Available Aimée R Edell, Jesse J Jung, Joel M Solomon, Richard N Palu Department of Ophthalmology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA Abstract: Use of cell phones in the general population has become increasingly commonplace. The distracting effects of cell phones among automobile drivers are well established, and legislation prohibits the use of handheld cell phones while driving in several states. Recent research has focused on the similar distracting effects of cell phones in the pedestrian population. In this report, an older gentleman suffered extensive facial trauma requiring surgery as a direct effect of cell phone use at the time the trauma occurred. This case highlights the role that portable electronic devices can play as a cause of ocular trauma. Keywords: orbital fracture, ocular trauma, orbital floor fracture, cell phone distraction, pedestrian safety

  11. Experimental and analytical studies on pedestrian induced footbridge vibrations

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gudmundsson, Gudmundur Valur; Ingólfsson, Einar Thór; Einarsson, Baldvin

    2007-01-01

    characteristics and to measure the response of the bridges to human induced excitation such as walking, running and jumping. Two of the bridges were a part of a design competition related to the realignment of an existing highway in the city centre of Reykjavik in 2005. The bridges have similar cross sections...... modes corresponding to the measured values. The models were subsequently used to calculate the predicted acceleration according to the preliminary version of the Eurocode (ENV 1992-2: Concrete bridges) using time-history analysis with a moving load as representative for a single pedestrian. The load...... models describing human-induced vibrations on structures in current literature and standards are explained, both for a single person walking or running and crowd loading. The measured vertical acceleration induced by single pedestrians was compared against the predictions and it was found that all...

  12. Experimental identification of pedestrian-induced lateral forces on footbridges

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ingólfsson, Einar Thór; Georgakis, Christos; Ricciardelli, Francesco

    2011-01-01

    combinations of frequencies (0.33-1.07 Hz) and amplitudes 4.5-48 mm). The experimental campaign involved seventy-one male and female human adults and covered approximately 55 km of walking distributed between 4954 individual tests. When walking on a laterally moving surface, motion-induced forces develop also......This paper presents a comprehensive experimental analysis of lateral forces generated by single pedestrians during continuous walking on a treadmill. Two different conditions are investigated; initially the treadmill is fixed and then it is laterally driven in a sinusoidal motion at varying...... and inter-subject variability. It is shown that the motion induced portion of the pedestrian load (on average) inputs energy into the structure in the frequency range (normalised by the average walking frequency) between approximately 0.6 and 1.2. Furthermore, it is shown that the load component in phase...

  13. Post accidental small breaks analysis

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Depond, G.; Gandrille, J.

    1980-04-01

    EDF ordered to FRAMATOME by 1977 to complete post accidental long term studies on 'First Contrat-Programme' reactors, in order to demonstrate the safety criteria long term compliance, to get information on NSSS behaviour and to improve the post accidental procedures. Convenient analytical models were needed and EDF and FRAMATOME respectively developped the AXEL and FRARELAP codes. The main results of these studies is that for the smallest breaks, it is possible to manually undertake cooling and pressure reducing actions by dumping the steam generators secondary side in order to meet the RHR operating specifications and perform long term cooling through this system. A specific small breaks procedure was written on this basis. The EDF and FRAMATOME codes are continuously improved; the results of a French set of separate effects experiments will be incorporated as well as integral system verification

  14. Communities on the Move: Pedestrian-Oriented Zoning as a Facilitator of Adult Active Travel to Work in the United States.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chriqui, Jamie F; Leider, Julien; Thrun, Emily; Nicholson, Lisa M; Slater, Sandy

    2016-01-01

    Communities across the United States have been reforming their zoning codes to create pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods with increased street connectivity, mixed use and higher density, open space, transportation infrastructure, and a traditional neighborhood structure. Zoning code reforms include new urbanist zoning such as the SmartCode, form-based codes, transects, transportation and pedestrian-oriented developments, and traditional neighborhood developments. To examine the relationship of zoning code reforms and more active living--oriented zoning provisions with adult active travel to work via walking, biking, or by using public transit. Zoning codes effective as of 2010 were compiled for 3,914 municipal-level jurisdictions located in 471 counties and 2 consolidated cities in 48 states and the District of Columbia, and that collectively covered 72.9% of the U.S. population. Zoning codes were evaluated for the presence of code reform zoning and nine pedestrian-oriented zoning provisions (1 = yes): sidewalks, crosswalks, bike-pedestrian connectivity, street connectivity, bike lanes, bike parking, bike-pedestrian trails/paths, mixed-use development, and other walkability/pedestrian orientation. A zoning scale reflected the number of provisions addressed (out of 10). Five continuous outcome measures were constructed using 2010-2014 American Community Survey municipal-level 5-year estimates to assess the percentage of workers: walking, biking, walking or biking, or taking public transit to work OR engaged in any active travel to work. Regression models controlled for municipal-level socioeconomic characteristics and a GIS-constructed walkability scale and were clustered on county with robust standard errors. Adjusted models indicated that several pedestrian-oriented zoning provisions were statistically associated (p biking, or engaging in any active travel (walking, biking, or any active travel) to work: code reform zoning, bike parking (street furniture

  15. Aging driver and pedestrian safety : parking lot hazards study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2012-06-20

    In 2009, Florida reported the highest rate of : pedestrian fatalities in the nation. At 2.51 : deaths per 100,000 residents, Floridas rate was : nearly twice the national average. These deaths : occurred in all age groups, but compared to : other ...

  16. An Outdoor Navigation System for Blind Pedestrians Using GPS and Tactile-Foot Feedback

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ramiro Velázquez

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents a novel, wearable navigation system for visually impaired and blind pedestrians that combines a global positioning system (GPS for user outdoor localization and tactile-foot stimulation for information presentation. Real-time GPS data provided by a smartphone are processed by dedicated navigation software to determine the directions to a destination. Navigational directions are then encoded as vibrations and conveyed to the user via a tactile display that inserts into the shoe. The experimental results showed that users were capable of recognizing with high accuracy the tactile feedback provided to their feet. The preliminary tests conducted in outdoor locations involved two blind users who were guided along 380–420 m predetermined pathways, while sharing the space with other pedestrians and facing typical urban obstacles. The subjects successfully reached the target destinations. The results suggest that the proposed system enhances independent, safe navigation of blind pedestrians and show the potential of tactile-foot stimulation in assistive devices.

  17. Pedestrian safety engineering and intelligent transportation system-based countermeasures program for reduced pedestrian fatalities, injuries, conflicts and other surrogate measures : Miami-Dade site.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2008-08-25

    This report presents the methods and key findings from the Miami-Dade comprehensive pedestrian safety planning and engineering project. It is one of three such projects in the nation funded by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to evaluate: In...

  18. Effect of psychological tension on pedestrian counter flow via an extended cost potential field cellular automaton model

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Xingli; Guo, Fang; Kuang, Hua; Zhou, Huaguo

    2017-12-01

    Psychology tells us that the different level of tension may lead to different behavior variation for individuals. In this paper, an extended cost potential field cellular automaton is proposed to simulate pedestrian counter flow under an emergency by considering behavior variation of pedestrian induced by psychological tension. A quantitative formula is introduced to describe behavioral changes caused by psychological tension, which also leads to the increasing cost of discomfort. The numerical simulations are performed under the periodic boundary condition and show that the presented model can capture some essential features of pedestrian counter flow, such as lane formation and segregation phenomenon for normal condition. Furthermore, an interesting feature is found that when pedestrians are in an extremely nervous state, a stable lane formation will be broken by a disordered mixture flow. The psychological nervousness under an emergency is not always negative to moving efficiency and a moderate level of tension will delay the occurrence of jamming phase. In addition, a larger asymmetrical ratio of left walkers to right walkers will improve the critical density related to the jamming phase and retard the occurrence of completely jammed phase. These findings will be helpful in pedestrian control and management under an emergency.

  19. Causes of accidental childhood deaths in China in 2010

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Chan, Kit Yee; Yu, Xin-Wei; Lu, Jia-Peng

    2015-01-01

    -4 years in China, of which 31 633 (10.1%) were accidental. Accidental deaths contributed 7240 (4.0%) of all deaths in neonatal period, 8838 (10.5%) among all post-neonatal infant deaths, and 15 554 (31.7%) among children with 1-4 years of age. Among four tested models, the most predictive was used...

  20. Self-propelled pedestrian dynamics model: Application to passenger movement and infection propagation in airplanes

    OpenAIRE

    Namilae, S.; Srinivasan, A.; Mubayi, A.; Scotch, M.; Pahle, R.

    2017-01-01

    Reducing the number of contacts between passengers on an airplane can potentially curb the spread of infectious diseases. In this paper, a social force based pedestrian movement model is formulated and applied to evaluate the movement and contacts among passengers during boarding and deplaning of an airplane. Within the social force modeling framework, we introduce location dependence on the self-propelling momentum of pedestrian particles. The model parameters are varied over a large design ...

  1. Doctor Ward's Accidental Terrarium.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hershey, David R.

    1996-01-01

    Presents the story of the accidental invention of the Wardian case, or terrarium, by Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward. Advocates the use of this story in teaching precollege biology as an illustration of how a chance event can lead to a major scientific advancement and as an example of the common occurrence of multiple discovery in botany. Contains 34…

  2. Killing-Yano tensors and Nambu mechanics

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Baleanu, D.

    1998-01-01

    Killing-Yano tensors were introduced in 1952 by Kentaro-Yano from mathematical point of view. The physical interpretation of Killing-Yano tensors of rank higher than two was unclear. We found that all Killing-Yano tensors η i 1 i 2 . .. i n with covariant derivative zero are Nambu tensors. We found that in the case of flat space case all Killing-Yano tensors are Nambu tensors. In the case of Taub-NUT and Kerr-Newmann metric Killing-Yano tensors of order two generate Nambu tensors of rank 3

  3. Estimating Safety Effects of Green-Man Countdown Devices at Signalized Pedestrian Crosswalk Based on Cellular Automata

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chen Chai

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Safety effects of Green-Man Countdown Device (GMCD at signalized pedestrian crosswalks are evaluated. Pedestrian behavior at GMCD and non-GMCD crosswalks is observed and analyzed. A microsimulation model is developed based on field observations to estimate safety performance. Simulation outputs allow analysts to assess the impacts of GMCD at various conditions with different geometric layout, traffic and pedestrian volumes, and the green time. According to simulation results, it is found that the safety impact of GMCD is affected by traffic condition as well as different time duration within green-man signal phase. In general, GMCD increases average walking velocity, especially during the last few seconds. The installation of GMCD improves safety performance generally, especially at more crowded crossings. Conflict severity is increased during last 10 s after GMCD installation. Findings from this study suggest that the current practice, which is to install GMCD at more crowded crosswalks or near the school zone, is effective. Moreover, at crosswalks with GMCD, longer all red signal phase is suggested to improve pedestrian safety during intergreen period.

  4. Severity of vehicle bumper location in vehicle-to-pedestrian impact accidents.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Matsui, Yasuhiro; Hitosugi, Masahito; Mizuno, Koji

    2011-10-10

    Pedestrian protection is one of the key topics for safety measures in traffic accidents all over the world. To analyze the relation between the collision site of the vehicle bumper and the severity of the lower extremity injuries, we performed biomechanical experiments. We compared the applied external force and the risks of subsequent injuries between the impact of the center and side positions of the front bumper. These comparisons were performed by practical impact tests with eight typical different types of cars which were typical of the current vehicle fleets. The tests were made using the TRL legform impactor which was a mechanical substitute of a pedestrian lower extremity. The TRL impactor is used all over the world for assessing the safety of car bumpers. It was found that the risks of lower extremity injuries in the impacts at the side positions, in front of the vehicle's side member, were significantly higher than those at the center. In the tests, we found that foam materials around the rigid front cross member had a significant effect on reducing the lower extremity injury risks and especially tibia fracture risk against vehicle bumper center collisions, but had little effect at the sides of the bumper over the vehicle's side members where the foam was thinner. We also found that the front shape of the vehicle affected the risk of ligaments injuries. According to these results, the information of impact locations of cars in vehicle-to-pedestrian traffic accidents is valuable for clinicians to diagnose patients with lower extremity injuries in traffic accidents and for forensic pathologists to analyze the accident reconstruction. Furthermore, the results suggest that testing of the bumper area in front of the main longitudinal beams should be included in the car safety legislation to require pedestrian safety. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  5. Active pedestrian safety by automatic braking and evasive steering

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Keller, C.; Dang, T.; Fritz, H.; Joos, A.; Rabe, C.; Gavrila, D.M.

    2011-01-01

    Active safety systems hold great potential for reducing accident frequency and severity by warning the driver and/or exerting automatic vehicle control ahead of crashes. This paper presents a novel active pedestrian safety system that combines sensing, situation analysis, decision making, and

  6. A Machine Learning Approach to Pedestrian Detection for Autonomous Vehicles Using High-Definition 3D Range Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pedro J. Navarro

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available This article describes an automated sensor-based system to detect pedestrians in an autonomous vehicle application. Although the vehicle is equipped with a broad set of sensors, the article focuses on the processing of the information generated by a Velodyne HDL-64E LIDAR sensor. The cloud of points generated by the sensor (more than 1 million points per revolution is processed to detect pedestrians, by selecting cubic shapes and applying machine vision and machine learning algorithms to the XY, XZ, and YZ projections of the points contained in the cube. The work relates an exhaustive analysis of the performance of three different machine learning algorithms: k-Nearest Neighbours (kNN, Naïve Bayes classifier (NBC, and Support Vector Machine (SVM. These algorithms have been trained with 1931 samples. The final performance of the method, measured a real traffic scenery, which contained 16 pedestrians and 469 samples of non-pedestrians, shows sensitivity (81.2%, accuracy (96.2% and specificity (96.8%.

  7. A Machine Learning Approach to Pedestrian Detection for Autonomous Vehicles Using High-Definition 3D Range Data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Navarro, Pedro J; Fernández, Carlos; Borraz, Raúl; Alonso, Diego

    2016-12-23

    This article describes an automated sensor-based system to detect pedestrians in an autonomous vehicle application. Although the vehicle is equipped with a broad set of sensors, the article focuses on the processing of the information generated by a Velodyne HDL-64E LIDAR sensor. The cloud of points generated by the sensor (more than 1 million points per revolution) is processed to detect pedestrians, by selecting cubic shapes and applying machine vision and machine learning algorithms to the XY, XZ, and YZ projections of the points contained in the cube. The work relates an exhaustive analysis of the performance of three different machine learning algorithms: k-Nearest Neighbours (kNN), Naïve Bayes classifier (NBC), and Support Vector Machine (SVM). These algorithms have been trained with 1931 samples. The final performance of the method, measured a real traffic scenery, which contained 16 pedestrians and 469 samples of non-pedestrians, shows sensitivity (81.2%), accuracy (96.2%) and specificity (96.8%).

  8. "The Killing Fields" of Innovation

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ingerslev, Karen

    2014-01-01

    to clustering of ideas, a design strategy which seemed to kill unique ideas. The reframing of innovation as a radical endeavor killed learning from others for being not innovative. The findings of this paper supplement theories of deliberate killing of ideas by suggesting framing, design and facilitation......This paper points to seemingly contradicted processes of framing innovation, idea generation and killing ideas. It reports from a yearlong innovation project, where health care professionals explored problems and tested ideas for solutions, regarding a future downsizing of the case hospital....... Theories in various ways describe the opening and closing phases of innovation. Exploration and idea generation opens a field of interest, which is then closed by making choices of ideas to further explore in the next opening phase. These choices deliberately kill a lot of ideas. In the innovation project...

  9. Effect of Pedestrians on the Saturation Flow Rate of Right Turn Movements at Signalized Intersection - Case Study from Rasht City

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roshani, Mostafa; Bargegol, Iraj

    2017-10-01

    Saturation flow rate is one of the important items in the analysis of the capacity of signalized intersections that are affected by some factors. Pedestrian crossing on signalized intersection is one of the factors which influence the vehicles flow. In addition, the released researches determined that the greatest impact of pedestrian on the saturation flow occurred in the Conflict zone where the highest chance of the encounter of pedestrians and vehicles has in turning movements. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the saturation flow rate considering the effect of a pedestrian on right turn movements of the signalized intersections in Rasht city. For this goal, 6 signalized intersections with 90 cycles of reviews were selected for the estimation of saturation flow rate by the microscopic method and also 3 right turn lanes containing radius differences with 70 cycles of reviews were collected for the investigation of the pedestrians’ effects. Each phase of right turn lanes cycle was divided in the pieces of 10-second period which was totally 476 sample volumes of considered pedestrians and vehicles at that period. Only 101 samples of those were ranged as saturated conditions. Finally, using different regression models, the best relationship between pedestrian’s volume and right turning vehicles flow parameters was evaluated. The results indicate that there is a primarily linear relationship between pedestrian volume and right turning vehicles flow with R2=0.6261. According to this regression model with the increase in pedestrians, saturation flow rate will be reduced. In addition, by comparing the adjustment factor obtained in the present study and other studies, it was found that the effect of pedestrians on the right-turn movements in Rasht city is less than the rest of the world.

  10. Observaciones sobre accidentes de trabajo y enfermedades profesionales

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Guillermo Sarmiento López

    1948-03-01

    Full Text Available En los tiempos antiguos no existía ley ni disposición alguna de carácter social que favoreciera a los trabajadores incapacitados por enfermedad o por accidente, por tanto, eran tratados como esclavos o considerados como animales. Los accidentes de trabajo y las enfermedades profesionales eran casi desconocidas antes de la introducción de la maquinaria en la industria, por lo cual no existía el derecho a indemnización por concepto de daños que sufriera el trabajador en el desempeño de sus labores. Solamente se conocen los edictos de Rotari (año 645 de la éra cristiana lanzados en Italia con el fin de reparar los accidentes de los obreros de la construcción y después, en la época del Renacimiento, algunas publicaciones que hablan de ciertas enfermedades de los trabajadores (Ellemborg 1473, Paracelso 1493-1541. Ya en la edad media la industria comenzó a tomar cierta importancia y dada la escasez de brazos, se vio obligado el patrón por fuerza de las circunstancias a prestar ayuda económica a los trabajadores incapacitados por una u otra causa. Los accidentes sucedidos en las industrias no se consideraban como de trabajo, por no conocerse el peligro que envolvía el empleo de la maqumana. En el siglo XVII y a principios del XVIII un médico italiano, Ramazzini habla del perjuicio que ocasionan ciertos trabajos en el organismo del individuo, produciendo alteraciones anatómicas y funcionales. Solamente a fines del siglo XVIII y a principios del XIX con la producción en masa, con el aumento del número de obreros y con la falta de protección, empezaron los accidentes de trabajo a hacerse notorios.

  11. [A spatially explicit analysis of traffic accidents involving pedestrians and cyclists in Berlin].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lakes, Tobia

    2017-12-01

    In many German cities and counties, sustainable mobility concepts that strengthen pedestrian and cyclist traffic are promoted. From the perspectives of urban development, traffic planning and public healthcare, a spatially differentiated analysis of traffic accident data is decisive. 1) The identification of spatial and temporal patterns of the distribution of accidents involving cyclists and pedestrians, 2) the identification of hotspots and exploration of possible underlying causes and 3) the critical discussion of benefits and challenges of the results and the derivation of conclusions. Spatio-temporal distributions of data from accident statistics in Berlin involving pedestrians and cyclists from 2011 to 2015 were analysed with geographic information systems (GIS). While the total number of accidents remains relatively stable for pedestrian and cyclist accidents, the spatial distribution analysis shows, however, that there are significant spatial clusters (hotspots) of traffic accidents with a strong concentration in the inner city area. In a critical discussion, the benefits of geographic concepts are identified, such as spatially explicit health data (in this case traffic accident data), the importance of the integration of other data sources for the evaluation of the health impact of areas (traffic accident statistics of the police), and the possibilities and limitations of spatial-temporal data analysis (spatial point-density analyses) for the derivation of decision-supported recommendations and for the evaluation of policy measures of health prevention and of health-relevant urban development.

  12. Experimental identification of the behaviour of and lateral forces from freely-walking pedestrians on laterally oscillating structures in a virtual reality environment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bocian, Mateusz; Macdonald, John H G; Burn, Jeremy F; Redmill, David

    2015-12-15

    Modelling pedestrian loading on lively structures such as bridges remains a challenge. This is because pedestrians have the capacity to interact with vibrating structures which can lead to amplification of the structural response. Current design guidelines are often inaccurate and limiting as they do not sufficiently acknowledge this effect. This originates in scarcity of data on pedestrian behaviour on vibrating ground and uncertainty as to the accuracy of results from previous experimental campaigns aiming to quantify pedestrian behaviour in this case. To this end, this paper presents a novel experimental setup developed to evaluate pedestrian actions on laterally oscillating ground in the laboratory environment while avoiding the implications of artificiality and allowing for unconstrained gait. A biologically-inspired approach was adopted in its development, relying on appreciation of operational complexities of biological systems, in particular their adaptability and control requirements. In determination of pedestrian forces to the structure consideration was given to signal processing issues which have been neglected in past studies. The results from tests conducted on the setup are related to results from previous experimental investigations and outputs of the inverted pendulum pedestrian model for walking on laterally oscillating ground, which is capable of generating self-excited forces.

  13. Zero velocity interval detection based on a continuous hidden Markov model in micro inertial pedestrian navigation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sun, Wei; Ding, Wei; Yan, Huifang; Duan, Shunli

    2018-06-01

    Shoe-mounted pedestrian navigation systems based on micro inertial sensors rely on zero velocity updates to correct their positioning errors in time, which effectively makes determining the zero velocity interval play a key role during normal walking. However, as walking gaits are complicated, and vary from person to person, it is difficult to detect walking gaits with a fixed threshold method. This paper proposes a pedestrian gait classification method based on a hidden Markov model. Pedestrian gait data are collected with a micro inertial measurement unit installed at the instep. On the basis of analyzing the characteristics of the pedestrian walk, a single direction angular rate gyro output is used to classify gait features. The angular rate data are modeled into a univariate Gaussian mixture model with three components, and a four-state left–right continuous hidden Markov model (CHMM) is designed to classify the normal walking gait. The model parameters are trained and optimized using the Baum–Welch algorithm and then the sliding window Viterbi algorithm is used to decode the gait. Walking data are collected through eight subjects walking along the same route at three different speeds; the leave-one-subject-out cross validation method is conducted to test the model. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can accurately detect different walking gaits of zero velocity interval. The location experiment shows that the precision of CHMM-based pedestrian navigation improved by 40% when compared to the angular rate threshold method.

  14. New criteria for assessing low wind environment at pedestrian level in Hong Kong

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Du, Yaxing; Mak, Cheuk Ming; Kwok, Kenny

    2017-01-01

    The choice of proper wind comfort criterion is considered to be crucial to reliable assessment of pedestrian level wind comfort. This paper aims to propose a wind comfort criterion that can be applied to Hong Kong, in which the wind comfort is seriously deteriorated by the moderated airflow, part...... represent the weak wind condition and provide suitable assessments of the wind comfort in Hong Kong. Moreover, the findings in this study provide scientific basis for future policy-making and the proposed criteria can also help city planners to improve the pedestrian level wind comfort....

  15. Accidentes de trabajo fatales y violencia interpersonal en Brasil, 2000-2010

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vilma Sousa Santana

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available En el presente estudio se estima la mortalidad proporcional por accidentes de trabajo provocados por violencia interpersonal en Brasil, entre 2000 y 2010. Se analizaron los datos del Sistema de Información sobre Mortalidad, basados en los informes estadísti- cos de defunción del Ministerio de Salud de Brasil, los cuales incluyen un campo para el registro de accidentes de trabajo que debe ser completado en toda defunción por causas externas. Se identificaron 1.368.732 casos de defunciones por causas externas, 31.576 (2,3% por accidentes de trabajo y solo 226 (0,02% por accidentes de trabajo con violen- cia interpersonal. Cerca del 80% de los informes estadísticos de defunción no tenían el campo “accidente de trabajo” completado. La mayor cantidad de casos ocurrió entre hom- bres (94,3% de 25-34 años, con nivel de escolaridad medio, ubicados en la región sudeste y noreste, que trabajan principalmente en la producción de bienes y servicios industriales y la actividad agropecuaria. La mayoría de los casos fueron causados por armas de fuego, seguidos por armas blancas, con un aumento relativo de estos últimos en el período estu- diado. Los resultados sugieren un gran subregistro de diagnósticos que reconocen la rela- ción con el trabajo. Se hace necesaria una mejor capacitación en el llenado de los informes estadísticos, así como estudios que cuantifiquen el subregistro de accidentes de trabajo y accidentes de trabajo con violencia interpersonal.

  16. Injured pedestrians in Cape Town - the role of alcohol

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    pedestrians and attempt to define the role which alcohol plays in this ... Forensic Chemistry Laboratory, Department of National Health, Cape. Town. J. Monis .... Short term « 8 wks). 80. 40.8. 47. 39.2. 33. 43.4. Long tenn (;;. 8 wks). 54 27.6.

  17. Prediction equation for vehicle-pedestrian crash and safety analysis ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The occurrences of vehicle-pedestrian crashes at signalized intersections were investigated using a 3 year (2004-2006) crash records of 82 signalized intersections in Accra, Kumasi, Tema, Sekondi-Takoradi and Tamale. The data were analyzed using Micro-computer Accident Analysis Package. Traffic flow characteristics ...

  18. Communities on the move: Pedestrian-oriented zoning as a facilitator of adult active travel to work in the United States

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jamie Friedman Chriqui

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available Background: Communities across the United States have been reforming their zoning codes to create pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods with increased street connectivity, mixed-use and higher density, open space, transportation infrastructure, and a traditional neighborhood structure. Zoning code reforms include new urbanist zoning such as the SmartCode, form-based codes, transects, transportation and pedestrian-oriented developments, and traditional neighborhood developments.Purpose: To examine the relationship of zoning code reforms and more active living-oriented zoning provisions with adult active travel to work via walking, biking, or by using public transit.Methods: Zoning codes effective as of 2010 were compiled for 3,914 municipal-level jurisdictions located in 471 counties and 2 consolidated cities in 48 states and the District of Columbia, and that collectively covered 72.9% of the U.S. population. Zoning codes were evaluated for the presence of code reform zoning and nine pedestrian-oriented zoning provisions (1=yes: sidewalks, crosswalks, bike-pedestrian connectivity, street connectivity, bike lanes, bike parking, bike-pedestrian trails/paths, mixed use development, and other walkability/pedestrian-orientation. A zoning scale reflected the number of provisions addressed (out of 10. Five continuous outcome measures were constructed using 2010-2014 American Community Survey municipal-level 5-year estimates to assess the percentage of workers: walking, biking, walking or biking, or taking public transit to work OR engaged in any active travel to work. Regression models controlled for municipal-level socioeconomic characteristics and a GIS-constructed walkability scale and were clustered on county with robust standard errors. Results: Adjusted models indicated that several pedestrian-oriented zoning provisions were statistically associated (p<.05 or lower with increased rates of walking, biking, or engaging in any active travel (walking

  19. Traveling by Bus Instead of Car on Urban Major Roads: Safety Benefits for Vehicle Occupants, Pedestrians, and Cyclists.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morency, Patrick; Strauss, Jillian; Pépin, Félix; Tessier, François; Grondines, Jocelyn

    2018-04-01

    Some studies have estimated fatality and injury rates for bus occupants, but data was aggregated at the country level and made no distinction between bus types. Also, injured pedestrians and cyclists, as a result of bus travel, were overlooked. We compared injury rates for car and city bus occupants on specific urban major roads, as well as the cyclist and pedestrian injuries associated with car and bus travel. We selected ten bus routes along major urban arterials (in Montreal, Canada). Passenger-kilometers traveled were estimated from vehicle counts at intersections (2002-2010) and from bus passenger counts (2008). Police accident reports (2001-2010) provided injury data for all modes. Injury rates associated with car and bus travel were calculated for vehicle occupants, pedestrians, and cyclists. Injury rate ratios were also computed. The safety benefits of bus travel, defined as the number of vehicle occupant, cyclist, and pedestrian injuries saved, were estimated for each route. Overall, for all ten routes, the ratio between car and bus occupant injury rates is 3.7 (95% CI [3.4, 4.0]). The rates of pedestrian and cyclist injuries per hundred million passenger-kilometers are also significantly greater for car travel than that for bus travel: 4.1 (95% CI [3.5, 4.9]) times greater for pedestrian injuries; 5.3 (95% CI [3.8, 7.6]) times greater for cyclist injuries. Similar results were observed for fatally and severely injured vehicle occupants, cyclists, and pedestrians. At the route level, the safety benefits of bus travel increase with the difference in injury rate associated with car and bus travel but also with the amount of passenger-kilometers by bus. Results show that city bus is a safer mode than car, for vehicle occupants but also for cyclists and pedestrians traveling along these bus routes. The safety benefits of bus travel greatly vary across urban routes; this spatial variation is most likely linked to environmental factors. Understanding the

  20. Pedestrian evacuation at the subway station under fire

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xiao-Xia, Yang; Hai-Rong, Dong; Xiu-Ming, Yao; Xu-Bin, Sun

    2016-04-01

    With the development of urban rail transit, ensuring the safe evacuation of pedestrians at subway stations has become an important issue in the case of an emergency such as a fire. This paper chooses the platform of line 4 at the Beijing Xuanwumen subway station to study the emergency evacuation process under fire. Based on the established platform, effects of the fire dynamics, different initial pedestrian densities, and positions of fire on evacuation are investigated. According to simulation results, it is found that the fire increases the air temperature and the smoke density, and decreases pedestrians’ visibility and walking velocity. Also, there is a critical initial density at the platform if achieving a safe evacuation within the required 6 minutes. Furthermore, different positions of fire set in this paper have little difference on crowd evacuation if the fire is not large enough. The suggestions provided in this paper are helpful for the subway operators to prevent major casualties. Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61322307 and 61233001).

  1. Wi-Fi/MARG Integration for Indoor Pedestrian Localization.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tian, Zengshan; Jin, Yue; Zhou, Mu; Wu, Zipeng; Li, Ze

    2016-12-10

    With the wide deployment of Wi-Fi networks, Wi-Fi based indoor localization systems that are deployed without any special hardware have caught significant attention and have become a currently practical technology. At the same time, the Magnetic, Angular Rate, and Gravity (MARG) sensors installed in commercial mobile devices can achieve highly-accurate localization in short time. Based on this, we design a novel indoor localization system by using built-in MARG sensors and a Wi-Fi module. The innovative contributions of this paper include the enhanced Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) and Wi-Fi localization approaches, and an Extended Kalman Particle Filter (EKPF) based fusion algorithm. A new Wi-Fi/MARG indoor localization system, including an Android based mobile client, a Web page for remote control, and a location server, is developed for real-time indoor pedestrian localization. The extensive experimental results show that the proposed system is featured with better localization performance, with the average error 0.85 m, than the one achieved by using the Wi-Fi module or MARG sensors solely.

  2. Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center vehicular and pedestrian traffic congestion study

    Science.gov (United States)

    2007-05-01

    The Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center of Tongass National Forest in Juneau, Alaska is experiencing vehicular and pedestrian congestion. This study was initiated by the United States Forest Service, Alaska Region, in cooperation with Western Federal L...

  3. Pedestrian crowd dynamics in merging sections: Revisiting the ;faster-is-slower; phenomenon

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shahhoseini, Zahra; Sarvi, Majid; Saberi, Meead

    2018-02-01

    The study of the discharge of active or self-driven matter in narrow passages has become of the growing interest in a variety of fields. The question has particularly important practical applications for the safety of pedestrian human flows notably in emergency scenarios. It has been suggested predominantly through simulation in some theoretical studies as well as through few experimentations that under certain circumstances, an elevated vigour to escape may exacerbate the outflow and cause further delay although the experimental evidence is rather mixed. The dimensions of this complex phenomenon known as the "faster-is slower" effect are of crucial importance to be understood owing to its potential practical implications for the emergency management. The contextual requirements of observing this phenomenon are yet to be identified. It is not clear whether a "do not speed up" policy is universally beneficial and advisable in an evacuation scenario. Here for the first time we experimentally examine this phenomenon in relation to the pedestrian flows at merging sections as a common geometric feature of crowd egress. Various merging angles and three different speed regimes were examined in high-density laboratory experiments. The measurements of flow interruptions and egress efficiency all indicated that the pedestrians were discharged faster when moving at elevated speed levels. We also observed clear dependencies between the discharge rate and the physical layout of the merging with certain designs clearly outperforming others. But regardless of the design, we observed faster throughput and greater avalanche sizes when we instructed pedestrians to run. Our results give the suggestion that observation of the faster-is-slower effect may necessitate certain critical conditions including passages being overly narrow relative to the size of participles (pedestrians) to create long-lasting blockages. The faster-is-slower assumption may not be universal and there may be

  4. An extension of the theory of planned behavior to predict pedestrians' violating crossing behavior using structural equation modeling.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhou, Hongmei; Romero, Stephanie Ballon; Qin, Xiao

    2016-10-01

    This paper aimed to examine pedestrians' self-reported violating crossing behavior intentions by applying the theory of planned behavior (TPB). We studied the behavior intentions regarding instrumental attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, the three basic components of TPB, and extended the theory by adding new factors including descriptive norm, perceived risk and conformity tendency to evaluate their respective impacts on pedestrians' behavior intentions. A questionnaire presented with a scenario that pedestrians crossed the road violating the pedestrian lights at an intersection was designed, and the survey was conducted in Dalian, China. Based on the 260 complete and valid responses, reliability and validity of the data for each question was evaluated. The data were then analyzed by using the structural equation modeling (SEM). The results showed that people had a negative attitude toward the behavior of violating road-crossing rules; they perceived social influences from their family and friends; and they believed that this kind of risky behavior would potentially harm them in a traffic accident. The results also showed that instrumental attitude and subjective norm were significant in the basic TPB model. After adding descriptive norm, subjective norm was no more significant. Other models showed that conformity tendency was a strong predictor, indicating that the presence of other pedestrians would influence behavioral intention. The findings could help to design more effective interventions and safety campaigns, such as changing people's attitude toward this violation behavior, correcting the social norms, increasing their safety awareness, etc. in order to reduce pedestrians' road crossing violations. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  5. U-Access: a web-based system for routing pedestrians of differing abilities

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sobek, Adam D.; Miller, Harvey J.

    2006-09-01

    For most people, traveling through urban and built environments is straightforward. However, for people with physical disabilities, even a short trip can be difficult and perhaps impossible. This paper provides the design and implementation of a web-based system for the routing and prescriptive analysis of pedestrians with different physical abilities within built environments. U-Access, as a routing tool, provides pedestrians with the shortest feasible route with respect to one of three differing ability levels, namely, peripatetic (unaided mobility), aided mobility (mobility with the help of a cane, walker or crutches) and wheelchair users. U-Access is also an analytical tool that can help identify obstacles in built environments that create routing discrepancies among pedestrians with different physical abilities. This paper discusses the system design, including database, algorithm and interface specifications, and technologies for efficiently delivering results through the World Wide Web (WWW). This paper also provides an illustrative example of a routing problem and an analytical evaluation of the existing infrastructure which identifies the obstacles that pose the greatest discrepancies between physical ability levels. U-Access was evaluated by wheelchair users and route experts from the Center for Disability Services at The University of Utah, USA.

  6. Quieter Cars and the Safety of Blind Pedestrians: Phase 1.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-04-01

    The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recognizes that quieter cars such as hybrid-electric vehicles in low-speed operation using their : electric motors, may introduce a safety issue for pedestrians who are blind. This study documents th...

  7. Static and mobile networks design for atmospheric accidental releases monitoring

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Abida, R.

    2010-01-01

    The global context of my PhD thesis work is the optimization of air pollution monitoring networks, but more specifically it concerns the monitoring of accidental releases of radionuclides in air. The optimization problem of air quality measuring networks has been addresses in the literature. However, it has not been addresses in the context of surveillance of accidental atmospheric releases. The first part of my thesis addresses the optimization of a permanent network of monitoring of radioactive aerosols in the air, covering France. The second part concerns the problem of targeting of observations in case of an accidental release of radionuclides from a nuclear plant. (author)

  8. Study on Evaluation Indicators System of Crowd Management for Transfer Stations Based on Pedestrian Simulation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Guanghou Zhang

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available Improving safety and convenience of transfer is one of the most vital tasks in subway system planning, design and operation management. Because of complicated space layout and crowded pedestrian, crowd control is a big challenge for management of transfer stations. Thus, a quantitative evaluation should be done before improvement measures are carried out. Literature review showed that present evaluation indicators about crowd management in subway system were all based on fixed value or experience. Dynamic effect caused by pedestrian congestion and various facility combination cannot be represented based on these indicators. Thus, in this paper, based on the pedestrian simulation tool, dynamic evaluation indicators system of crowd management was established from the point of safety, cost-effectiveness and comfort. In order to aid decision makers to identify the most appropriate scenario to improve the effectiveness of crowd management, Matter-Element Analysis (MEA was used to rate different scenarios. A pedestrian simulation model of a designing intermodal transfer station was built and four different scenarios were tested to demonstrate how to use this indicators system. Simulation results were evaluated based on the dynamic indicators system and MEA. The application results show that the dynamic evaluation indicators system is operational and can reflect level of the crowd management in transfer station comprehensively and precisely.

  9. The Usage and Perception of Pedestrian Zones in Lithuanian Cities: Multiple Criteria and Comparative Analysis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rūta Dičiūnaitė-Rauktienė

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available As pedestrian zones are public spaces in urban areas, they are important in terms of meeting people’s needs. However, it is worth noting that attention should be paid not only to the development of the physical infrastructure, but also to a sustainable balance between the socio-economic and environmental aspects. To guide urban planning and management initiatives towards more sustainable patterns, it is essential to re-examine the already existing characteristics of cities, establishing how they are used and perceived by inhabitants. The present research suggests environmental, economic and social criteria that determine a greater vitality of pedestrian zones in cities and better life quality for the inhabitants. A questionnaire survey was used to assess common attitudes regarding the research topic in major cities in Lithuania. The multiple criteria decision-making COPRAS (COmplex PRoportional ASsessment method was used for the formation of a priority queue. The research results showed the attitudes of inhabitants towards pedestrian zones in Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipėda. The inhabitants of these three cities regarded social and environmental criteria groups as the most significant. Contrary to what was expected and anticipated, respondents do not consider economic criteria as playing a key role in the sustainable preservation and development of pedestrian zones.

  10. Pedestrian road traffic injuries in urban Peruvian children and adolescents: case control analyses of personal and environmental risk factors.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Joseph Donroe

    2008-09-01

    Full Text Available Child pedestrian road traffic injuries (RTIs are an important cause of death and disability in poorer nations, however RTI prevention strategies in those countries largely draw upon studies conducted in wealthier countries. This research investigated personal and environmental risk factors for child pedestrian RTIs relevant to an urban, developing world setting.This is a case control study of personal and environmental risk factors for child pedestrian RTIs in San Juan de Miraflores, Lima, Perú. The analysis of personal risk factors included 100 cases of serious pedestrian RTIs and 200 age and gender matched controls. Demographic, socioeconomic, and injury data were collected. The environmental risk factor study evaluated vehicle and pedestrian movement and infrastructure at the sites in which 40 of the above case RTIs occurred and 80 control sites.After adjustment, factors associated with increased risk of child pedestrian RTIs included high vehicle volume (OR 7.88, 95%CI 1.97-31.52, absent lane demarcations (OR 6.59, 95% CI 1.65-26.26, high vehicle speed (OR 5.35, 95%CI 1.55-18.54, high street vendor density (OR 1.25, 95%CI 1.01-1.55, and more children living in the home (OR 1.25, 95%CI 1.00-1.56. Protective factors included more hours/day spent in school (OR 0.52, 95%CI 0.33-0.82 and years of family residence in the same home (OR 0.97, 95%CI 0.95-0.99.Reducing traffic volumes and speeds, limiting the number of street vendors on a given stretch of road, and improving lane demarcation should be evaluated as components of child pedestrian RTI interventions in poorer countries.

  11. Improved social force model based on exit selection for microscopic pedestrian simulation in subway station

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    郑勋; 李海鹰; 孟令云; 许心越; 陈旭

    2015-01-01

    An improved social force model based on exit selection is proposed to simulate pedestrians’ microscopic behaviors in subway station. The modification lies in considering three factors of spatial distance, occupant density and exit width. In addition, the problem of pedestrians selecting exit frequently is solved as follows: not changing to other exits in the affected area of one exit, using the probability of remaining preceding exit and invoking function of exit selection after several simulation steps. Pedestrians in subway station have some special characteristics, such as explicit destinations, different familiarities with subway station. Finally, Beijing Zoo Subway Station is taken as an example and the feasibility of the model results is verified through the comparison of the actual data and simulation data. The simulation results show that the improved model can depict the microscopic behaviors of pedestrians in subway station.

  12. Predictors of road crossing safety in pedestrians with Parkinson's disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lin, Chin-Hsien; Ou, Yang-Kun; Wu, Ruey-Meei; Liu, Yung-Ching

    2013-03-01

    Road-crossing safety is an important issue in an aging society. Information regarding the risk of crossing the street to pedestrians with Parkinson's disease (PD) is limited. To assess the risk and predictors of unsafe crossing behaviors in patients with PD, we compared 31 pedestrians with mild-to-moderate PD to 50 age/gender/education-matched controls using a battery of cognitive, visual, and motor tests. With a simulated simple street-crossing situation, we determined the remaining time and safety margin for each participant in different traffic situations, including variable motor vehicle speed, time gap, and time of the day. Odds ratios (ORs) were estimated by logistic regression models. We found that pedestrians with PD were more vulnerable to traffic accidents than controls (OR 1.61 [1.28-2.02], P=0.01). The risk of crossing road correlated in a dose-dependent manner with the severity of PD, based on both Hoehn and Yahr (H&Y) stages and unified Parkinson's disease rating scale (UPDRS) motor scores (OR 1.13 for each increasing point of UPDSR, Psafety errors, rather than executive function. Environmental factors, such as fast approaching motor vehicle speed (OR 4.50 [2.92-6.95], Proad-crossing safety. Future large sample studies are needed to confirm our findings. Training programs or portable stimulator devices that compensate for the visual-spatial disabilities of PD patients are required to improve road safety for PD patients. Crown Copyright © 2012. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  13. Microsimulation of the Impact of Access Management Practices to Pedestrians

    Science.gov (United States)

    2018-12-31

    The study applied microsimulation to analyze the impact of access management (AM) to the operational performances of vehicles and pedestrians. A conceptual model was developed in VISSIM and VISWALK to examine the effect of access and signals density ...

  14. Far-Infrared Based Pedestrian Detection for Driver-Assistance Systems Based on Candidate Filters, Gradient-Based Feature and Multi-Frame Approval Matching

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Guohua Wang

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available Far-infrared pedestrian detection approaches for advanced driver-assistance systems based on high-dimensional features fail to simultaneously achieve robust and real-time detection. We propose a robust and real-time pedestrian detection system characterized by novel candidate filters, novel pedestrian features and multi-frame approval matching in a coarse-to-fine fashion. Firstly, we design two filters based on the pedestrians’ head and the road to select the candidates after applying a pedestrian segmentation algorithm to reduce false alarms. Secondly, we propose a novel feature encapsulating both the relationship of oriented gradient distribution and the code of oriented gradient to deal with the enormous variance in pedestrians’ size and appearance. Thirdly, we introduce a multi-frame approval matching approach utilizing the spatiotemporal continuity of pedestrians to increase the detection rate. Large-scale experiments indicate that the system works in real time and the accuracy has improved about 9% compared with approaches based on high-dimensional features only.

  15. Randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a video game as a child pedestrian educational tool.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arbogast, Helen; Burke, Rita V; Muller, Valerie; Ruiz, Pearl; Knudson, M Margaret; Knudson, Margaret M; Upperman, Jeffrey S

    2014-05-01

    Injury is the number one cause of death and disability in children in the United States and an increasingly important public health problem globally. While prevention of injuries is an important goal, prevention efforts are currently fragmented, poorly funded, and rarely studied. Among school-aged children, pedestrian crashes are a major mechanism of injury. We hypothesized that we could develop a game-based educational tool that would be effective in teaching elementary school children the principles of pedestrian safety. Between November 2011 and June 2013, second- and third-grade children in Los Angeles Unified School District were randomly assigned to play a unique interactive video game (Ace's Adventure) about pedestrian safety or to a traditional didactic session about pedestrian safety. A pretest and posttest were administered to the study participants. Afterward, study participants were observed for appropriate pedestrian behavior on a simulated street set called Street Smarts. All statistical analyses were performed using SAS version 9.2. A total of 348 study participants took the pretest and posttest. There were 180 who were randomized to the didactic and 168 who were randomized to the video game. The didactic group demonstrated a higher mean score increase (1.01, p video game group (0.44, p video game, as compared with the didactic group, more frequently exhibited appropriate behavior during the following: exiting a parked car (p = 0.01), signaling to a car that was backing up (p = 0.01), signaling to a stopped car (p = 0.0002), and crossing the street (p = 0.01). Students who played the educational video game about pedestrian safety performed similarly to those who attended a more traditional and labor-intensive didactic learning. Innovative educational methods, such as game playing, could significantly change our approach to injury prevention and have the potential to decrease the burden of injury among children worldwide.

  16. Users’ Perceptions on Pedestrian Prioritized Neighborhoods: a study on Terrace Row Housing Estates in Malaysia

    OpenAIRE

    Tareef Hayat Khan; Abubakar Danladi Isah; Elahe Anjomshoaa; Soheil Sabri

    2015-01-01

    Malaysia is currently enjoying an overhang of housing supply. The focus is gradually shifting from providing just a mere shelter to something more socially. Terrace row housing estates in Malaysia is the major prototype of housing in the country. Pedestrian activities are catalyst to social interaction, but have been ignored in this model. During the last century, motor age established the supremacy of car prioritized models over that of pedestrians around the world, Malaysia has ...

  17. Pedestrians' intention to jaywalk: Automatic or planned? A study based on a dual-process model in China.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Yaoshan; Li, Yongjuan; Zhang, Feng

    2013-01-01

    The present study investigates the determining factors of Chinese pedestrians' intention to violate traffic laws using a dual-process model. This model divides the cognitive processes of intention formation into controlled analytical processes and automatic associative processes. Specifically, the process explained by the augmented theory of planned behavior (TPB) is controlled, whereas the process based on past behavior is automatic. The results of a survey conducted on 323 adult pedestrian respondents showed that the two added TPB variables had different effects on the intention to violate, i.e., personal norms were significantly related to traffic violation intention, whereas descriptive norms were non-significant predictors. Past behavior significantly but uniquely predicted the intention to violate: the results of the relative weight analysis indicated that the largest percentage of variance in pedestrians' intention to violate was explained by past behavior (42%). According to the dual-process model, therefore, pedestrians' intention formation relies more on habit than on cognitive TPB components and social norms. The implications of these findings for the development of intervention programs are discussed. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  18. Pedestrian Detection Based on Adaptive Selection of Visible Light or Far-Infrared Light Camera Image by Fuzzy Inference System and Convolutional Neural Network-Based Verification.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kang, Jin Kyu; Hong, Hyung Gil; Park, Kang Ryoung

    2017-07-08

    A number of studies have been conducted to enhance the pedestrian detection accuracy of intelligent surveillance systems. However, detecting pedestrians under outdoor conditions is a challenging problem due to the varying lighting, shadows, and occlusions. In recent times, a growing number of studies have been performed on visible light camera-based pedestrian detection systems using a convolutional neural network (CNN) in order to make the pedestrian detection process more resilient to such conditions. However, visible light cameras still cannot detect pedestrians during nighttime, and are easily affected by shadows and lighting. There are many studies on CNN-based pedestrian detection through the use of far-infrared (FIR) light cameras (i.e., thermal cameras) to address such difficulties. However, when the solar radiation increases and the background temperature reaches the same level as the body temperature, it remains difficult for the FIR light camera to detect pedestrians due to the insignificant difference between the pedestrian and non-pedestrian features within the images. Researchers have been trying to solve this issue by inputting both the visible light and the FIR camera images into the CNN as the input. This, however, takes a longer time to process, and makes the system structure more complex as the CNN needs to process both camera images. This research adaptively selects a more appropriate candidate between two pedestrian images from visible light and FIR cameras based on a fuzzy inference system (FIS), and the selected candidate is verified with a CNN. Three types of databases were tested, taking into account various environmental factors using visible light and FIR cameras. The results showed that the proposed method performs better than the previously reported methods.

  19. Priorities and Potential of Pedestrian Protection - Accident data, Experimental tests and Numerical Simulations of Car-to-Pedestrian Impacts

    OpenAIRE

    Fredriksson, Rikard

    2011-01-01

    Pedestrian disability and fatality as a consequence of car crashes is a large global health problem. To introduce maximally effective car-based countermeasures it is important to understand which injuries are most common and from which car parts they originate. It is also important to focus on the most severe injuries resulting in disability or death. The aim of this thesis was therefore to determine priorities for and evaluate the potential of car-mounted safety systems designed to mitigate ...

  20. Engineering design for pedestrian safety at highway-rail grade crossings

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-07-01

    A number of pedestrian treatments at railroad grade crossings have been developed and are used throughout the United States. The decision of when to use these treatments is generally a matter of best practices, using a decision tree, or conducting a ...

  1. Evaluation of Honour Killings in Turkey

    OpenAIRE

    Celbis, Osman; Ozdemir, Bora; Oruc, Mucahit; Dogan, Mustafa; Egri, Mucahit

    2013-01-01

    Honour killings are still pervasive in many societies.  The aim of this study is to reveal the characteristics of the victims of honour killings and honour killers in Malatya province between 2000 and 2004, and to review the concept of honour killings in Turkey.  Data are collected from the records of Malatya Higher Criminal Court.  The results are discussed in the light of the data obtained from Turkish Republic Ministry of Justice.  There were 36 honour killings in Malatya between 2000 and ...

  2. High pressures in room evacuation processes and a first approach to the dynamics around unconscious pedestrians

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cornes, F. E.; Frank, G. A.; Dorso, C. O.

    2017-10-01

    Clogging raises as the principal phenomenon during many evacuation processes of pedestrians in an emergency situation. As people push to escape from danger, compression forces may increase to harming levels. Many individuals might fall down, while others will try to dodge the fallen people, or, simply pass through them. We studied the dynamics of the crowd for these situations, in the context of the "social force model". We modeled the unconscious (fallen) pedestrians as inanimate bodies that can be dodged (or not) by the surrounding individuals. We found that new morphological structures appear along the evacuating crowd. Under specific conditions, these structures may enhance the evacuation performance. The pedestrian's willings for either dodging or passing through the unconscious individuals play a relevant role in the overall evacuation performance.

  3. Killing, letting die and euthanasia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Husak, D N

    1979-12-01

    Medical ethicists debate whether or not the moral assessment of cases of euthanasia should depend on whether the patient is 'killed' or 'allowed to die'. The usual presupposition is that a clear distinction between killing and letting die can be drawn so that this substantive question is not begged. I contend that the categorisation of cases of instances of killing rather than as instances of letting die depends in part on a prior moral assessment of the case. Hence is it trivially rather than substantively true that the distinction has moral significance. But even if a morally neutral (ie non-question begging) distinction could be drawn, its application to the euthanasia controversy is problematic. I illustrate the difficulties of employing this distinction to reach moral conclusions by critically discussing Philippa Foot's recent treatment of euthanasia. I conclude that even if an act of euthanasia is an instance of killing, and there exists a prima facie moral duty not to kill, and no more stringent duty overrides this duty, one still cannot determine such an act to be morally impermissible.

  4. Killing, letting die and euthanasia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Husak, D N

    1979-01-01

    Medical ethicists debate whether or not the moral assessment of cases of euthanasia should depend on whether the patient is 'killed' or 'allowed to die'. The usual presupposition is that a clear distinction between killing and letting die can be drawn so that this substantive question is not begged. I contend that the categorisation of cases of instances of killing rather than as instances of letting die depends in part on a prior moral assessment of the case. Hence is it trivially rather than substantively true that the distinction has moral significance. But even if a morally neutral (ie non-question begging) distinction could be drawn, its application to the euthanasia controversy is problematic. I illustrate the difficulties of employing this distinction to reach moral conclusions by critically discussing Philippa Foot's recent treatment of euthanasia. I conclude that even if an act of euthanasia is an instance of killing, and there exists a prima facie moral duty not to kill, and no more stringent duty overrides this duty, one still cannot determine such an act to be morally impermissible. PMID:541821

  5. Microscopic and macroscopic models for pedestrian crowds

    OpenAIRE

    Makmul, Juntima

    2016-01-01

    This thesis is concerned with microscopic and macroscopic models for pedes- trian crowds. In the first chapter, we consider pedestrians exit choices and model human behaviour in an evacuation process. Two microscopic models, discrete and continuous, are studied in this chapter. The former is a cellular automaton model and the latter is a social force model. Different numerical test cases are investigated and their results are compared. In chapter 2, a hierarchy of models for...

  6. Modeling Impulse and Non-Impulse Store Choice Processes in a Multi-Agent Simulation of Pedestrian Activity in Shopping Environments

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Dijkstra, J.; Timmermans, H.J.P.; Vries, de B.; Timmermans, H.J.P.

    2009-01-01

    This chapter presents a multi-agent approach for modeling impulse and non-impulse store choice processes of pedestrian activity in shopping environments. The pedestrian simulation context will be discussed as well as the behavioral principles underlying the store choice processes. For these

  7. THE WOODEN GLUE STRUCTURES OF FOREIGN MODERN PEDESTRIAN BRIDGES

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    E. N. Trach

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available A brief review on the application of wooden bridges is presented as well as wooden structures of modern pedestrian and road bridges built in recent years in the Western Europe are described. Based upon the review, the conclusions concerning the construction of similar structures in Ukraine are made.

  8. Dynamic route guidance strategy in a two-route pedestrian-vehicle mixed traffic flow system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Mianfang; Xiong, Shengwu; Li, Bixiang

    2016-05-01

    With the rapid development of transportation, traffic questions have become the major issue for social, economic and environmental aspects. Especially, during serious emergencies, it is very important to alleviate road traffic congestion and improve the efficiency of evacuation to reduce casualties, and addressing these problems has been a major task for the agencies responsible in recent decades. Advanced road guidance strategies have been developed for homogeneous traffic flows, or to reduce traffic congestion and enhance the road capacity in a symmetric two-route scenario. However, feedback strategies have rarely been considered for pedestrian-vehicle mixed traffic flows with variable velocities and sizes in an asymmetric multi-route traffic system, which is a common phenomenon in many developing countries. In this study, we propose a weighted road occupancy feedback strategy (WROFS) for pedestrian-vehicle mixed traffic flows, which considers the system equilibrium to ease traffic congestion. In order to more realistic simulating the behavior of mixed traffic objects, the paper adopted a refined and dynamic cellular automaton model (RDPV_CA model) as the update mechanism for pedestrian-vehicle mixed traffic flow. Moreover, a bounded rational threshold control was introduced into the feedback strategy to avoid some negative effect of delayed information and reduce. Based on comparisons with the two previously proposed strategies, the simulation results obtained in a pedestrian-vehicle traffic flow scenario demonstrated that the proposed strategy with a bounded rational threshold was more effective and system equilibrium, system stability were reached.

  9. Accidental Durotomy in Minimally Invasive Transforaminal Lumbar Interbody Fusion: Frequency, Risk Factors, and Management

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jan-Helge Klingler

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Purpose. To assess the frequency, risk factors, and management of accidental durotomy in minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (MIS TLIF. Methods. This single-center study retrospectively investigates 372 patients who underwent MIS TLIF and were mobilized within 24 hours after surgery. The frequency of accidental durotomies, intraoperative closure technique, body mass index, and history of previous surgery was recorded. Results. We identified 32 accidental durotomies in 514 MIS TLIF levels (6.2%. Analysis showed a statistically significant relation of accidental durotomies to overweight patients (body mass index ≥25 kg/m2; P=0.0493. Patient age older than 65 years tended to be a positive predictor for accidental durotomies (P=0.0657. Mobilizing patients on the first postoperative day, we observed no durotomy-associated complications. Conclusions. The frequency of accidental durotomies in MIS TLIF is low, with overweight being a risk factor for accidental durotomies. The minimally invasive approach seems to minimize durotomy-associated complications (CSF leakage, pseudomeningocele because of the limited dead space in the soft tissue. Patients with accidental durotomy can usually be mobilized within 24 hours after MIS TLIF without increased risk. The minimally invasive TLIF technique might thus be beneficial in the prevention of postoperative immobilization-associated complications such as venous thromboembolism. This trial is registered with DRKS00006135.

  10. Notes on super Killing tensors

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Howe, P.S. [Department of Mathematics, King’s College London,The Strand, London WC2R 2LS (United Kingdom); Lindström, University [Department of Physics and Astronomy, Theoretical Physics, Uppsala University,SE-751 20 Uppsala (Sweden); Theoretical Physics, Imperial College London,Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ (United Kingdom)

    2016-03-14

    The notion of a Killing tensor is generalised to a superspace setting. Conserved quantities associated with these are defined for superparticles and Poisson brackets are used to define a supersymmetric version of the even Schouten-Nijenhuis bracket. Superconformal Killing tensors in flat superspaces are studied for spacetime dimensions 3,4,5,6 and 10. These tensors are also presented in analytic superspaces and super-twistor spaces for 3,4 and 6 dimensions. Algebraic structures associated with superconformal Killing tensors are also briefly discussed.

  11. Aging driver and pedestrian safety : parking lot hazards study [summary].

    Science.gov (United States)

    2012-01-01

    In 2009, Florida reported the highest rate of pedestrian fatalities in the nation. At 2.51 deaths per 100,000 residents, Floridas rate was nearly twice the national average. These deaths occurred in all age groups, but compared to other age groups...

  12. High-level fusion of depth and intensity for pedestrian classification

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Rohrbach, M.; Enzweiler, M.; Gavrila, D.M.

    2009-01-01

    This paper presents a novel approach to pedestrian classification which involves a high-level fusion of depth and intensity cues. Instead of utilizing depth information only in a pre-processing step, we propose to extract discriminative spatial features (gradient orientation histograms and local

  13. 75 FR 62469 - Drawbridge Operation Regulations; Newtown Creek, Dutch Kills, English Kills, and Their...

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-10-12

    ... DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY Coast Guard 33 CFR Part 117 [Docket No. USCG-2010-0907] Drawbridge Operation Regulations; Newtown Creek, Dutch Kills, English Kills, and Their Tributaries, NY, Maintenance AGENCY: Coast Guard, DHS. ACTION: Notice of temporary deviation from regulations. SUMMARY: The Commander...

  14. 75 FR 30299 - Drawbridge Operation Regulations; Newtown Creek, Dutch Kills, English Kills, and Their...

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-06-01

    ... DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY Coast Guard 33 CFR Part 117 [Docket No. USCG-2010-0355] Drawbridge Operation Regulations; Newtown Creek, Dutch Kills, English Kills, and Their Tributaries, NY, Maintenance AGENCY: Coast Guard, DHS. ACTION: Notice of temporary deviation from regulations. SUMMARY: The Commander...

  15. Patterns and Trends in Accidental Poisoning Deaths: Pennsylvania's Experience 1979-2014.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lauren C Balmert

    Full Text Available The purpose of this study was to examine county and state-level accidental poisoning mortality trends in Pennsylvania from 1979 to 2014.Crude and age-adjusted death rates were formed for age group, race, sex, and county for accidental poisonings (ICD 10 codes X40-X49 from 1979 to 2014 for ages 15+ using the Mortality and Population Data System housed at the University of Pittsburgh. Rate ratios were calculated comparing rates from 1979 to 2014, overall and by sex, age group, and race. Joinpoint regression was used to detect statistically significant changes in trends of age-adjusted mortality rates.Rate ratios for accidental poisoning mortality in Pennsylvania increased more than 14-fold from 1979 to 2014. The largest rate ratios were among 35-44 year olds, females, and White adults. The highest accidental poisoning mortality rates were found in the counties of Southwestern Pennsylvania, those surrounding Philadelphia, and those in Northeast Pennsylvania near Scranton.The patterns and locations of accidental poisoning mortality by race, sex, and age group provide direction for interventions and policy makers. In particular, this study found the highest rate ratios in PA among females, whites, and the age group 35-44.

  16. On integrability of the Killing equation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Houri, Tsuyoshi; Tomoda, Kentaro; Yasui, Yukinori

    2018-04-01

    Killing tensor fields have been thought of as describing the hidden symmetry of space(-time) since they are in one-to-one correspondence with polynomial first integrals of geodesic equations. Since many problems in classical mechanics can be formulated as geodesic problems in curved space and spacetime, solving the defining equation for Killing tensor fields (the Killing equation) is a powerful way to integrate equations of motion. Thus it has been desirable to formulate the integrability conditions of the Killing equation, which serve to determine the number of linearly independent solutions and also to restrict the possible forms of solutions tightly. In this paper, we show the prolongation for the Killing equation in a manner that uses Young symmetrizers. Using the prolonged equations, we provide the integrability conditions explicitly.

  17. Individual housing-based socioeconomic status predicts risk of accidental falls among adults.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ryu, Euijung; Juhn, Young J; Wheeler, Philip H; Hathcock, Matthew A; Wi, Chung-Il; Olson, Janet E; Cerhan, James R; Takahashi, Paul Y

    2017-07-01

    Accidental falls are a major public health concern among people of all ages. Little is known about whether an individual-level housing-based socioeconomic status measure is associated with the risk of accidental falls. Among 12,286 Mayo Clinic Biobank participants residing in Olmsted County, Minnesota, subjects who experienced accidental falls between the biobank enrollment and September 2014 were identified using ICD-9 codes evaluated at emergency departments. HOUSES (HOUsing-based Index of SocioEconomic Status), a socioeconomic status measure based on individual housing features, was also calculated. Cox regression models were utilized to assess the association of the HOUSES (in quartiles) with accidental fall risk. Seven hundred eleven (5.8%) participants had at least one emergency room visit due to an accidental fall during the study period. Subjects with higher HOUSES were less likely to experience falls in a dose-response manner (hazard ratio: 0.58; 95% confidence interval: 0.44-0.76 for comparing the highest to the lowest quartile). In addition, the HOUSES was positively associated with better health behaviors, social support, and functional status. The HOUSES is inversely associated with accidental fall risk requiring emergency care in a dose-response manner. The HOUSES may capture falls-related risk factors through housing features and socioeconomic status-related psychosocial factors. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. GIS DATA COLLECTION FOR PEDESTRIAN FACILITIES AND FURNITURE USING MAPINR FOR ANDROID

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    N. Naharudin

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available Mobile GIS is introduced to reduce the time taken in completing the field data collection procedure. With the expansion of technology today, mobile GIS is not far behind. It can be integrated with the high-end innovation tools like smartphones. Spatial data capture which deemed to be the toughest stage of a GIS project is made simple with this method. Many studies had demonstrated the usage of mobile GIS in collecting spatial data and this paper discusses how it can be applied in capturing the GPS location of pedestrian furniture and facilities. Although some of the spatial data are available from local agencies, still a more detailed data is needed to create a better data model for this study. This study uses a free android application, MAPinr, which is available on the Google PlayStore to collect spatial data on site. It adopted the GNSS and cellular network positioning to locate the position of the required data. As the application allows the captured data to be exported to a GIS platform, the geometric error of the data was improved. In the end, an authenticated spatial dataset comprising pedestrian facilities and furniture in point and line form will be produced and later be used in a pedestrian network analysis study.

  19. GIS Data Collection for Pedestrian Facilities and Furniture Using Mapinr for Android

    Science.gov (United States)

    Naharudin, N.; Ahamad, M. S. S.; Sadullah, A. F. M.

    2016-09-01

    Mobile GIS is introduced to reduce the time taken in completing the field data collection procedure. With the expansion of technology today, mobile GIS is not far behind. It can be integrated with the high-end innovation tools like smartphones. Spatial data capture which deemed to be the toughest stage of a GIS project is made simple with this method. Many studies had demonstrated the usage of mobile GIS in collecting spatial data and this paper discusses how it can be applied in capturing the GPS location of pedestrian furniture and facilities. Although some of the spatial data are available from local agencies, still a more detailed data is needed to create a better data model for this study. This study uses a free android application, MAPinr, which is available on the Google PlayStore to collect spatial data on site. It adopted the GNSS and cellular network positioning to locate the position of the required data. As the application allows the captured data to be exported to a GIS platform, the geometric error of the data was improved. In the end, an authenticated spatial dataset comprising pedestrian facilities and furniture in point and line form will be produced and later be used in a pedestrian network analysis study.

  20. Identification of contributing factors to pedestrian overpass selection

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yao Wu

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available In order to improve the efficiency of overpass and the safety level of pedestrian, this paper aims to investigate the contributing factors for selective preference of overpass. Eight overpasses were investigated in Xi’an, and a questionnaire was conducted by the pedestrians near the overpass. Totally, 1131 valid samples (873 used of overpasses and 258 non-used of overpasses were collected. Based on the data, a binary logit (BL model was developed to identify what and how the factors affect the selective preference of overpass. The BL model was calibrated by the maximum likelihood method. Likelihood ratio test and McFadden-R2 were used to analyze the goodness-of-fit of the model. The results show that the BL model has a reasonable goodness-of-fit, and the prediction accuracy of the BL model can reach 81.9%. The BL model showed that the selective preference of overpass was significantly influenced by eight factors, including gender, age, career, education level, license, detour wishes, detour distance, and crossing time. Besides, the odds ratios of significant factors were also analyzed to explain the impacts of the factors on selective preference of overpass.

  1. [Child-pedestrian injuries inflicted in the road traffic accidents as a forensic medical problem].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Savenkova, E N; Efimov, A A

    The road traffic accidents are known to make the greatest contribution to the overall structure of pediatric traumatism with the fatal outcome. The problem of pediatric traumatism remains on top of its relevancy despite numerous administrative, legal, technical, and financial measures taken at the government level in an attempt to reduce the mortality rate associated with the child-pedestrian injuries inflicted in the road traffic accidents. The objective of the present study was to summarize and interpret the results published in the scientific literature concerning child-pedestrian injuries inflicted in the road traffic accidents with special reference to the age of the victims and the type of the injury. The analysis of the publications of the domestic and foreign authors has demonstrated that the available data of interest remain to be systematized and that the forensic medical aspects of the problem in question are poorly represented in these materials. It was shown that forensic medical expertises of child-pedestrian injuries inflicted in the road traffic accidents are frequently carried out without taking into consideration the peculiar anatomical and physiological features of the child's organism. The available data concerning the mechanisms and evaluation of severe injuries inflicted to the children in the road traffic accidents are insufficient for the development of the algorithms for the relevant adequate forensic medical expertise. In the light of these findings, the problem of the child-pedestrian injuries inflicted in the road traffic accidents takes on new significance when considered in the context of pediatric traumatism. There is evidently the growing necessity to formulate the universal database containing systematized objective information for the development of new methods of forensic medical expertise for the elucidation of the mechanisms of road traffic injuries inflicted to the children of different age groups depending on the type of the

  2. The effect of conformity tendency on pedestrians' road-crossing intentions in China: an application of the theory of planned behavior.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhou, Ronggang; Horrey, William J; Yu, Ruifeng

    2009-05-01

    This paper presents a survey investigating the effects of age, gender and conformity tendency on Chinese pedestrians' intention to cross the road in potentially dangerous situations. A sample of 426 respondents completed a demographic questionnaire, a scale measuring their tendency towards social conformity, and a questionnaire based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB). This questionnaire measured people's intentions to cross the road in two different road crossing situations, their attitude towards the behavior, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, anticipated affect, moral norms, and perceived risk. The two scenarios depicted (i) a situation where the crossing was consistent with other pedestrians' behavior (Conformity scenario) and (ii) a situation where the road crossing was inconsistent with other pedestrians (Non-Conformity scenario). Pedestrians reported greater likelihood in crossing the road when other pedestrians were crossing the road. People who showed greater tendencies towards social conformity also had stronger road crossing intentions than low conformity people for both scenarios. The predictive model explained 36% and 48% of the variance in the Non-Conformity and Conformity scenarios, respectively. Attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and perceived risk emerged as the common predictors for both situations. The results have a number of theoretical and practical implications. In particular, interventions should focus on perceptions of risk that inform road users that crossing with other pedestrians against the signal is also unsafe and prohibited, and may lead to negative outcomes.

  3. Comportamiento de los accidentes laborales

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Miguel Gómez Vital

    1999-01-01

    Full Text Available Se realiza una valoración sobre la situación de la accidentalidad en centros de trabajo de la provincia de Villa Clara de 1993 a 1997. El total de accidentes registrados fue de 12 522. Últimamente han disminuido y su índice de incidencia. En el último año se redujo el promedio de días perdidos, pero el índice de gravedad alcanzó la cifra mayor. Se insiste en el cumplimiento del programa de prevención y reducción de accidentes laborales.The situation of the occupational accidents that occurred in the province of Villa Clara from 1993 to 1997 was assessed. 12 522 accidents were registered during that periods. A decrease of these accidents and of their incidence rate has been observed lately. The average of lost days was reduced during the last year, out the severity index reached the highest figure. Emphasis is made on the importance of fulfilling the program of prevention and reduction of occupational accidents.

  4. Identification and Prediction of Large Pedestrian Flow in Urban Areas Based on a Hybrid Detection Approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kaisheng Zhang

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Recently, population density has grown quickly with the increasing acceleration of urbanization. At the same time, overcrowded situations are more likely to occur in populous urban areas, increasing the risk of accidents. This paper proposes a synthetic approach to recognize and identify the large pedestrian flow. In particular, a hybrid pedestrian flow detection model was constructed by analyzing real data from major mobile phone operators in China, including information from smartphones and base stations (BS. With the hybrid model, the Log Distance Path Loss (LDPL model was used to estimate the pedestrian density from raw network data, and retrieve information with the Gaussian Progress (GP through supervised learning. Temporal-spatial prediction of the pedestrian data was carried out with Machine Learning (ML approaches. Finally, a case study of a real Central Business District (CBD scenario in Shanghai, China using records of millions of cell phone users was conducted. The results showed that the new approach significantly increases the utility and capacity of the mobile network. A more reasonable overcrowding detection and alert system can be developed to improve safety in subway lines and other hotspot landmark areas, such as the Bundle, People’s Square or Disneyland, where a large passenger flow generally exists.

  5. Advanced Emergency Braking Controller Design for Pedestrian Protection Oriented Automotive Collision Avoidance System

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Guo Lie

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Automotive collision avoidance system, which aims to enhance the active safety of the vehicle, has become a hot research topic in recent years. However, most of the current systems ignore the active protection of pedestrian and other vulnerable groups in the transportation system. An advanced emergency braking control system is studied by taking into account the pedestrians and the vehicles. Three typical braking scenarios are defined and the safety situations are assessed by comparing the current distance between the host vehicle and the obstacle with the critical braking distance. To reflect the nonlinear time-varying characteristics and control effect of the longitudinal dynamics, the vehicle longitudinal dynamics model is established in CarSim. Then the braking controller with the structure of upper and lower layers is designed based on sliding mode control and the single neuron PID control when confronting deceleration or emergency braking conditions. Cosimulations utilizing CarSim and Simulink are finally carried out on a CarSim intelligent vehicle model to explore the effectiveness of the proposed controller. Results display that the designed controller has a good response in preventing colliding with the front vehicle or pedestrian.

  6. Advanced emergency braking controller design for pedestrian protection oriented automotive collision avoidance system.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lie, Guo; Zejian, Ren; Pingshu, Ge; Jing, Chang

    2014-01-01

    Automotive collision avoidance system, which aims to enhance the active safety of the vehicle, has become a hot research topic in recent years. However, most of the current systems ignore the active protection of pedestrian and other vulnerable groups in the transportation system. An advanced emergency braking control system is studied by taking into account the pedestrians and the vehicles. Three typical braking scenarios are defined and the safety situations are assessed by comparing the current distance between the host vehicle and the obstacle with the critical braking distance. To reflect the nonlinear time-varying characteristics and control effect of the longitudinal dynamics, the vehicle longitudinal dynamics model is established in CarSim. Then the braking controller with the structure of upper and lower layers is designed based on sliding mode control and the single neuron PID control when confronting deceleration or emergency braking conditions. Cosimulations utilizing CarSim and Simulink are finally carried out on a CarSim intelligent vehicle model to explore the effectiveness of the proposed controller. Results display that the designed controller has a good response in preventing colliding with the front vehicle or pedestrian.

  7. An improved pulse coupled neural network with spectral residual for infrared pedestrian segmentation

    Science.gov (United States)

    He, Fuliang; Guo, Yongcai; Gao, Chao

    2017-12-01

    Pulse coupled neural network (PCNN) has become a significant tool for the infrared pedestrian segmentation, and a variety of relevant methods have been developed at present. However, these existing models commonly have several problems of the poor adaptability of infrared noise, the inaccuracy of segmentation results, and the fairly complex determination of parameters in current methods. This paper presents an improved PCNN model that integrates the simplified framework and spectral residual to alleviate the above problem. In this model, firstly, the weight matrix of the feeding input field is designed by the anisotropic Gaussian kernels (ANGKs), in order to suppress the infrared noise effectively. Secondly, the normalized spectral residual saliency is introduced as linking coefficient to enhance the edges and structural characteristics of segmented pedestrians remarkably. Finally, the improved dynamic threshold based on the average gray values of the iterative segmentation is employed to simplify the original PCNN model. Experiments on the IEEE OTCBVS benchmark and the infrared pedestrian image database built by our laboratory, demonstrate that the superiority of both subjective visual effects and objective quantitative evaluations in information differences and segmentation errors in our model, compared with other classic segmentation methods.

  8. Reclaiming Pedestrian Space from Car Dominated Neighborhoods

    OpenAIRE

    Andreas L. Savvides

    2012-01-01

    For a long time as a result of accommodating car traffic, planning ideologies in the past put a low priority on public space, pedestrianism and the role of city space as a meeting place for urban dwellers. In addition, according to authors such as Jan Gehl, market forces and changing architectural perceptions began to shift the focus of planning practice from the integration of public space in various pockets around the contemporary city to individual buildings. Eventuall...

  9. Pedestrian wind environment around buildings: Literature review and practical examples

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Blocken, B.J.E.; Carmeliet, J.E.

    2004-01-01

    The construction of a building inevitably changes the microclimate in its vicinity. In particular near high-rise buildings, high wind velocities are often introduced at pedestrian level that can be experienced as uncomfortable or even dangerous. Therefore, the design of a building should not only

  10. Pedestrian Path Prediction with Recursive Bayesian Filters: A Comparative Study

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Schneider, N.; Gavrila, D.M.

    2013-01-01

    In the context of intelligent vehicles, we perform a comparative study on recursive Bayesian filters for pedestrian path prediction at short time horizons (< 2s). We consider Extended Kalman Filters (EKF) based on single dynamical models and Interacting Multiple Models (IMM) combining several such

  11. Spacetimes foliated by Killing horizons

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Pawlowski, Tomasz; Lewandowski, Jerzy; Jezierski, Jacek

    2004-01-01

    It seems to be expected that a horizon of a quasi-local type, such as a Killing or an isolated horizon, by analogy with a globally defined event horizon, should be unique in some open neighbourhood in the spacetime, provided the vacuum Einstein or the Einstein-Maxwell equations are satisfied. The aim of our paper is to verify whether that intuition is correct. If one can extend a so-called Kundt metric, in such a way that its null, shear-free surfaces have spherical spacetime sections, the resulting spacetime is foliated by so-called non-expanding horizons. The obstacle is Kundt's constraint induced at the surfaces by the Einstein or the Einstein-Maxwell equations, and the requirement that a solution be globally defined on the sphere. We derived a transformation (reflection) that creates a solution to Kundt's constraint out of data defining an extremal isolated horizon. Using that transformation, we derived a class of exact solutions to the Einstein or Einstein-Maxwell equations of very special properties. Each spacetime we construct is foliated by a family of the Killing horizons. Moreover, it admits another, transversal Killing horizon. The intrinsic and extrinsic geometries of the transversal Killing horizon coincide with the one defined on the event horizon of the extremal Kerr-Newman solution. However, the Killing horizon in our example admits yet another Killing vector tangent to and null at it. The geometries of the leaves are given by the reflection

  12. Modeling Stop-and-Go Waves in Pedestrian Dynamics

    OpenAIRE

    Portz, Andrea; Seyfried, Armin

    2010-01-01

    Several spatially continuous pedestrian dynamics models have been validated against empirical data. We try to reproduce the experimental fundamental diagram (velocity versus density) with simulations. In addition to this quantitative criterion, we tried to reproduce stop-and-go waves as a qualitative criterion. Stop-and-go waves are a characteristic phenomenon for the single file movement. Only one of three investigated models satisfies both criteria.

  13. PESAN MORAL DALAM FILM TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (ANALISIS SEMIOTIKA PADA FILM TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

    OpenAIRE

    RENYOET, JAQUILINE MELISSA

    2014-01-01

    2014 JAQUILINE MELISSA RENYOET. Pesan Moral Dalam Film To Kill A Mockingbird (Analisis Semiotika Pada Film To Kill A Mockingbird). (Dibimbing oleh Muh. Nadjib dan Alem Febri Sonni). Tujuan Penelitian ini adalah mengidentifikasi bentuk pesan moral dan memahami makna pesan moral dalam film To Kill A Mockingbird. Penelitian ini dilakukan selama kurang lebih 2 bulan yaitu Maret ??? Mei 2014. Metode yang digunakan untuk penelitian ini adalah metode penelitian kualitatif den...

  14. Using Space Syntax to Assess Safety in Public Areas - Case Study of Tarbiat Pedestrian Area, Tabriz-Iran

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cihangir Çamur, Kübra; Roshani, Mehdi; Pirouzi, Sania

    2017-10-01

    In studying the urban complex issues, simulation and modelling of public space use considerably helps in determining and measuring factors such as urban safety. Depth map software for determining parameters of the spatial layout techniques; and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software for analysing and evaluating the views of the pedestrians on public safety were used in this study. Connectivity, integration, and depth of the area in the Tarbiat city blocks were measured using the Space Syntax Method, and these parameters are presented as graphical and mathematical data. The combination of the results obtained from the questionnaire and statistical analysis with the results of spatial arrangement technique represents the appropriate and inappropriate spaces for pedestrians. This method provides a useful and effective instrument for decision makers, planners, urban designers and programmers in order to evaluate public spaces in the city. Prior to physical modification of urban public spaces, space syntax simulates the pedestrian safety to be used as an analytical tool by the city management. Finally, regarding the modelled parameters and identification of different characteristics of the case, this study represents the strategies and policies in order to increase the safety of the pedestrians of Tarbiat in Tabriz.

  15. A descriptive study of accidental skeletal injuries and non-accidental skeletal injuries of child maltreatment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ghanem, Maha A H; Moustafa, Tarek A; Megahed, Haidy M; Salama, Naglaa; Ghitani, Sara A

    2018-02-01

    Lack of awareness and recognition of child maltreatment is the major reason behind underreporting. All victims often interact with the health care system for routine or emergency care. In several research works, non-accidental fractures are the second most common injury in maltreated children and it is represented up to one-third of cases. To determine the incidence of different types of accidental and non-accidental skeletal injuries among children, estimate the severity of injuries according to the modified injury severity score and to determine the degree of fractures either closed or opened (Gustiloe-Anderson open fracture classification). Moreover, identifying fractures resulting from child abuse and neglect. This aimed for early recognition of non-accidental nature of fractures in child maltreatment that can prevent further morbidity and mortality. A descriptive study was carried out on all children (109) with skeletal injuries who were admitted to both Main Alexandria and El-Hadara Orthopedic and Traumatology University Hospitals during six months. History, physical examination and investigations were done for the patients. A detailed questionnaire was taken to diagnose child abuse and neglect. Gustiloe-Anderson open fracture classification was used to estimate the degree of open fractures. Out of 109 children, twelve cases (11%) were categorized as child maltreatment. One case was physical abuse, eight cases (7.3%) were child neglect and three cases (2.8%) were labour exploitation. Road traffic accidents (RTA) was the commonest cause of skeletal injuries followed by falling from height. Regarding falls, they included 4 cases of stair falls in neglected children and another four cases of falling from height (balcony/window). The remaining 36 cases of falls were accidental. The skeletal injuries were in the form of fractures in 99 cases, dislocation in two cases, both fracture and/or dislocation in three cases, and bone deformity from brachial plexus injury

  16. Urban sprawl as a risk factor in motor vehicle occupant and pedestrian fatalities.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ewing, Reid; Schieber, Richard A; Zegeer, Charles V

    2003-09-01

    We sought to determine the association between urban sprawl and traffic fatalities. We created a sprawl index by applying principal components analysis to data for 448 US counties in the largest 101 metropolitan areas. Regression analysis was used to determine associations between the index and traffic fatalities. For every 1% increase in the index (i.e., more compact, less sprawl), all-mode traffic fatality rates fell by 1.49% (P Urban sprawl was directly related to traffic fatalities and pedestrian fatalities. Subsequent studies should investigate relationships at a finer geographic scale and should strive to improve on the measure of exposure used to adjust pedestrian fatality rates.

  17. Using infrared HOG-based pedestrian detection for outdoor autonomous searching UAV with embedded system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shao, Yanhua; Mei, Yanying; Chu, Hongyu; Chang, Zhiyuan; He, Yuxuan; Zhan, Huayi

    2018-04-01

    Pedestrian detection (PD) is an important application domain in computer vision and pattern recognition. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become a major field of research in recent years. In this paper, an algorithm for a robust pedestrian detection method based on the combination of the infrared HOG (IR-HOG) feature and SVM is proposed for highly complex outdoor scenarios on the basis of airborne IR image sequences from UAV. The basic flow of our application operation is as follows. Firstly, the thermal infrared imager (TAU2-336), which was installed on our Outdoor Autonomous Searching (OAS) UAV, is used for taking pictures of the designated outdoor area. Secondly, image sequences collecting and processing were accomplished by using high-performance embedded system with Samsung ODROID-XU4 and Ubuntu as the core and operating system respectively, and IR-HOG features were extracted. Finally, the SVM is used to train the pedestrian classifier. Experiment show that, our method shows promising results under complex conditions including strong noise corruption, partial occlusion etc.

  18. Accidental Innovation

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Austin, Robert D.; Devin, Lee; Sullivan, Erin E.

    2012-01-01

    Historical accounts of human achievement suggest that accidents can play an important role in innovation. In this paper, we seek to contribute to an understanding of how digital systems might support valuable unpredictability in innovation processes by examining how innovators who obtain value from...... they incorporate accidents into their deliberate processes and arranged surroundings. By comparing makers working in varied conditions, we identify specific factors (e.g., technologies, characteristics of technologies) that appear to support accidental innovation. We show that makers in certain specified...... conditions not only remain open to accident but also intentionally design their processes and surroundings to invite and exploit valuable accidents. Based on these findings, we offer advice for the design of digital systems to support innovation processes that can access valuable unpredictability....

  19. Daily Living Movement Recognition for Pedestrian Dead Reckoning Applications

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alessio Martinelli

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Nowadays, activity recognition is a central topic in numerous applications such as patient and sport activity monitoring, surveillance, and navigation. By focusing on the latter, in particular Pedestrian Dead Reckoning navigation systems, activity recognition is generally exploited to get landmarks on the map of the buildings in order to permit the calibration of the navigation routines. The present work aims to provide a contribution to the definition of a more effective movement recognition for Pedestrian Dead Reckoning applications. The signal acquired by a belt-mounted triaxial accelerometer is considered as the input to the movement segmentation procedure which exploits Continuous Wavelet Transform to detect and segment cyclic movements such as walking. Furthermore, the segmented movements are provided to a supervised learning classifier in order to distinguish between activities such as walking and walking downstairs and upstairs. In particular, four supervised learning classification families are tested: decision tree, Support Vector Machine, k-nearest neighbour, and Ensemble Learner. Finally, the accuracy of the considered classification models is evaluated and the relative confusion matrices are presented.

  20. Pedestrian detection in infrared image using HOG and Autoencoder

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Tianbiao; Zhang, Hao; Shi, Wenjie; Zhang, Yu

    2017-11-01

    In order to guarantee the safety of driving at night, vehicle-mounted night vision system was used to detect pedestrian in front of cars and send alarm to prevent the potential dangerous. To decrease the false positive rate (FPR) and increase the true positive rate (TPR), a pedestrian detection method based on HOG and Autoencoder (HOG+Autoencoder) was presented. Firstly, the HOG features of input images were computed and encoded by Autoencoder. Then the encoded features were classified by Softmax. In the process of training, Autoencoder was trained unsupervised. Softmax was trained with supervision. Autoencoder and Softmax were stacked into a model and fine-tuned by labeled images. Experiment was conducted to compare the detection performance between HOG and HOG+Autoencoder, using images collected by vehicle-mounted infrared camera. There were 80000 images for training set and 20000 for the testing set, with a rate of 1:3 between positive and negative images. The result shows that when TPR is 95%, FPR of HOG+Autoencoder is 0.4%, while the FPR of HOG is 5% with the same TPR.