Child pedestrians, self-driving cars: what is the safest scenario for crossing the road?

Safely crossing a busy street is usually the result of social interaction. Pedestrians look for cues like waving, nodding, flashing headlights, and, of course, coming to a complete stop to know if it's safe to cross.

But those cues may not exist or be different in self-driving cars. How do children and adults know it's safe to cross the road?

In a new study, researchers at the University of Iowa investigated how pre-teens decide when it's safe to cross a residential street with oncoming traffic. Researchers found that children made the safest choice when a self-driving car arrived at an intersection, indicating with a green light on the top of the vehicle that it was safe to cross, and stopped. . Researchers have found that when self-driving cars turn on green lights further away from intersections, children are forced to cross at more dangerous intersections, even if they slow down.

“Children exhibited safer behavior when the light later turned green,” says Jodi Plumert, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and lead author of the study. “They seemed to be treating the traffic lights like pedestrian signals, waiting for the lights to come on before they started crossing. So our recommendation for self-driving car design is that traffic lights should be used by cars. The light should come on when the vehicle stops, not before. ”

The difference in green light timing with self-driving cars is important. Children tend to use traffic lights as permission for cars to move forward and cross, believing that cars will stop when they approach an intersection. But as Plummert and co-author Elizabeth O'Neill point out, that can be dangerous.

“If for some reason a car doesn't stop, this can be dangerous, but it has the benefit of pedestrians being able to cross the road more quickly,” said Russell B. and Florence D. of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Plummert, who serves as the Day committee chairman, said.

“So while you might want to turn on these lights earlier to make traffic flow more efficient, it's probably quite dangerous, especially for children,” added O'Neill, assistant professor in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health. . Corresponding author of the study.

While some may see self-driving cars as the technology of the future, self-driving cars are now operating in American cities. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety predicts there will be 3.5 million vehicles with self-driving capabilities on U.S. roads by next year, and 4.5 million by 2030. This year, a self-driving car taxi service called Waymo One will be operating in four of his cities. , including new routes in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas.

This comes as pedestrian deaths by cars remain a serious concern. More than 7,500 pedestrians will be killed by drivers in 2022, the highest number in 40 years, according to the Governor's Highway Safety Association.

“The reality is that a stop sign doesn't necessarily mean that drivers will come to a complete stop,” said Plumert, who has been researching vehicle-pedestrian interactions since 2012. Sometimes they're just apart. ”

The researchers aimed to understand how children respond to two different cues from self-driving cars when deciding when to cross the road. Distance from the intersection when the green light on top of the vehicle is activated. The researchers placed about 100 children between the ages of 8 and 12 in a realistic simulated environment and asked them to cross one lane of the road when an oncoming driverless vehicle crossed them. The traversal took place in the Hank Virtual Environment Lab's immersive 3D interactive space on the UI campus.

The researchers observed and recorded children's crossing behavior and spoke with them after the sessions to learn more about how they responded to green lights and when cars slowed down.

One major difference in crossing behavior: When a car's green light came on farther from the intersection, the participant's children did so on average more than children in the scenario where the light came on later and the car stopped at the intersection. I entered the intersection 1.5 seconds early. point.

“That time difference is actually very important,” Plummert points out. “Early flashing green lights are potentially dangerous because adults, as well as children, believe cars will stop and use them as a signal to start crossing.”

This finding builds on research published by Plumert and O'Neill in 2017, which found that children up to their early teens have difficulty consistently crossing roads safely in virtual environments, and that children as young as 6 years old have difficulty crossing the road safely in virtual environments. The accident rate was as high as 8%.

This risk highlights the need for children to receive clear and understandable signals from self-driving cars, researchers say. Researchers are testing a variety of communication signals, including flashing lights, projecting eyes onto the windshield, racer stripes splashed on the edge of the windshield, and written text (walk/don't walk).

“Everyone has some level of utility, but children are a special case,” O'Neill says. O'Neal earned her doctorate in psychology from Iowa State in 2018 and worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Plumert's lab before joining the faculty in the College of Public Health. . “It's not always possible to incorporate flashing lights or racing lights to indicate that you're slowing down or that a car is trying to give way.”

The researchers found that children naturally understood signaling using green and red light. But they learned that timing is important.

“I don't think automakers should be considering the idea of ​​turning on their lights early or signaling early,” Plummert said. I hate waiting. ”

The study is titled “Deciding when to cross in front of an autonomous vehicle: How child and adult pedestrians respond to eHMI timing and vehicle kinematics.” The paper was published online on April 24 in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention.

Lakshmi Subramanian, who earned her PhD at Iowa State and is now at Kean University in New Jersey, is also the study's lead author. Joseph Carney, professor emeritus in the Department of Computer Science, is senior author. Contributors include his Nam-Yoon Kim and his Megan Noonan from the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

The U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Transportation funded the research.

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