Analysis of pedestrians’ road crossing behavior, in social groups

Abstract

A significant percentage of pedestrians walk in social groups (friends, families, or acquaintances who walk together). Although patterns generated by social interactions among group members have been shown to affect crowd dynamics, studies on the effect of social interactions at different crossing phases under low pedestrian density are limited. This study aims to comprehensively examine the influence of size and sex composition on pedestrians’ behaviors when walking alone and with friends in different phases before, during, and after the road crossing. For this, experiences were carried out with controlled small groups of friends (varying size and sex composition) at three unsignalized crosswalks with low pedestrian density. The average speed and distance between the young pedestrians in six segments of the trajectories (two in each phase), extracted from video recordings, were analyzed with linear mixed models. Results show that pedestrians reduce their speed when approaching the curb, they accelerate while on the crosswalk, and reduce again when they reach the other side. In all phases, the average speed of the groups was lower than the single pedestrians, and the females’ groups walked slower than the males, except during the crossing, where no sex-related differences were found. On the contrary, before the crossing, the distance increased and decreased from the second segment in the crosswalk. The smallest distance was observed between the female groups and dyads. These findings have relevant implications for research on pedestrian behavior, helping to better understand the complexity of pedestrian dynamics and improve pedestrian safety.