Increasing Pedestrian Safety Using External Communication of Autonomous Vehicles for Signalling Hazards

Abstract

Pedestrians are very vulnerable road users. Autonomous vehicles driving on the street are expected to reduce the risks for pedestrians. However, traffic will include manually driven vehicles for the next decades; therefore, the risk remains and can even increase due to pedestrians' overreliance on technology. Thus, we propose to use autonomous vehicles parked at the side of the road to continually survey its surroundings and to issue warnings to pedestrians in potentially risky situations. Findings of a Virtual Reality (N=20) study show that participants preferred the communication on the vehicle compared to a communication on the sidewalk, that the visualization grabbed participants' attention, and that overall crossing time was not significantly affected. This concept highlights the potential autonomous vehicles could have in making traffic safer, even while being parked.