Different risk thresholds in pedestrian road crossing behaviour:A comparison of French and Japanese approaches

Cédric Sueur (1, 2) , Barbara Class (1) , Charlène Hamm (1) , Xavier Meyer (1) , Marie Pelé (2, 3)

1 DEPE-IPHC - Département Ecologie, Physiologie et Ethologie
2 Primate Research Institute
3 Ethobiosciences

tWhen crossing the road, pedestrians have to make a trade-off between saving time and avoiding any riskof injuries. Here, we studied how culture influences an individual's perception of risks when crossing astreet, using survival analysis. This study is the first to use this analysis to assess cognitive mechanismsand optimality of decisions underlying road crossing behaviour. We observed pedestrian behaviour intwo city centres: Inuyama (Japan) and Strasbourg (France). In each city, observations were made at a safesite consisting of a crosswalk and a street light and at an unsafe site (i.e. no crosswalk or street light).At the unsafe site, we measured the time needed by a pedestrian to take a decision (Tdec). During Tdec, apedestrian estimates whether he can (Tsafe) or cannot (Trisk) cross the road. Using survival analysis, westudied the distributions of these three time variables and showed that French pedestrians took more risksthan Japanese pedestrians, and that males took more risks than females, but only in Japan. More studieswould considerably broaden our understanding on how culture may affect decision-making processesunder risky circumstances

Mots clés: Decision; risk; human; traffic; information; diffusion model

Domaines: Sciences de l'environnement; Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Cédric Sueur, Barbara Class, Charlène Hamm, Xavier Meyer, Marie Pelé. Different risk thresholds in pedestrian road crossing behaviour:A comparison of French and Japanese approaches. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 2013, 58, pp.59-63. ⟨10.1016/j.aap.2013.04.027⟩. ⟨hal-00824773⟩