Analysis of dilemma zone for pedestrians at high-speed uncontrolled midblock crossing

Pedestrians are vulnerable to accidents and are at risk whenever they share road space with vehicular traffic. The risk to pedestrians is especially high in countries like India where a large number of pedestrians are seen on roads with vehicular traffic not yielding to their needs. Therefore, it is not surprising that many of the victims of road accidents in India, particularly in urban areas, are pedestrians. One of the primary reasons for accidents at pedestrian crossing (when drivers do not yield to pedestrians) lies in the inability of pedestrians to judge the safe gap while crossing a road. Often pedestrians are in a state of confusion/dilemma while making a decision on whether to accept or reject a gap. Under these circumstances, decision making for pedestrians during road crossing is a tough task. This paper aims at analyzing and quantifying the dilemma zone for crossing pedestrians at high-speed uncontrolled midblock crossings. A field study was undertaken in which crossing pedestrians and through-moving vehicles were recorded by placing video cameras at selected midblock road sections, having marked pedestrian crossing. Total of 1107 pedestrian lags/gaps were extracted and studied with consideration of both temporal and spatial lags/gaps for analysis. Dilemma zone was determined by using different methods such as the gap cumulative distribution method, the binary logit method, the support vector machine and the probabilistic method. For the selected midblock sections, dilemma zone started at 49 m and ended at 62 m upstream from the marked pedestrian crossing. The upper and lower boundaries of dilemma zone can be further used to develop a pedestrian assistance system at midblock crossing for the safe movement of pedestrian.