at crossings without traffic controls

at crossings without traffic controls

Gene Bourquin, Rob Wall, Dona Sauerburger

. . . . Influencing Driver Yielding Behavior

What conditions cause drivers to yield:

vests, flags, and cane, oh my?


Why driversyield?


Social theories and empirical research indicate

that dependency cues influence drivers

Harrell (1993)


Drivers yielded more readily to individuals perceived to be dependent: mothers with a carriage, people thought to have a physical disability, or people

who are blind.


(Bake & Reitz, 1978)

What driverssee


Attentional capture: a stimulus that alters

attention away from the prevailing focus…which draw a attention without

that person’s volition.


(Hughes, Vachon, & Jones, 2005)

(Mack, Pappas, Silverman, & Gay, 2002)


What’s in your attention set?

Inattentional Blindness: the phenomenon when items not expected, not of interest, or not meaningful are not perceived by the visual system.


(Ramachandran & Rogers-Ramachandran, 2005)

Conditions are likely to be noticed and understood

when attentional capture is high and inattentional

blindness in minimized.


What we knew aboutdrivers’ yielding


driver yielding for pedestrians approaching crosswalk at a roundabout: no white cane: 52% drivers with white cane: 63% drivers (Geruschat and Hassan, 2005)


driver yielding for pedestrians standing at roundabout crosswalks with a visible long white cane or dog (Ashmead, Guth, Wall, Long, & Ponchillia, 2005)


Entry lanes (slower): No cane / dog: 20% With cane / dog: 36.4%Exit lanes (faster): No cane / dog: 0% With cane / dog: 9%

(Ashmead, Guth, Wall, Long, & Ponchillia, 2005)


driver yielding for pedestrians standing at crosswalk with a visible long white cane or dog

(Guth, Ashmead, Long, Wall, & Ponchillia, 2005)


mid-block campus crossing: no cane/dog: 80% trials with cane/dog: 96% trial



Uncontrolled crossing at downtown intersection (stop sign on intersecting street):

no cane/dog: 5% trials with cane/dog: 7% trials



What we did What we found



P

C2

C1

X


375 trials

Control yielding rate: 0.41Flag 0.62Vest 0.49Cane 0.87Cane waive 0.89Cane waive vest 0.91


The main differences seen in yielding were across the crossing

conditions


Secondarily, vehicle approach speed most

critically impacted yielding


This study, along with previous studies, indicate a general

principle that using a cane will improve safety. A long cane is a well-known symbol that reduces inattention blindness through its

visibility and meaningfulness.


Mack, A., Pappas, Z., Silverman, M., & Gay, R. (2002). What we see: Inattention and the capture of attention by meaning. Consciousness and Cognition 11 (2002) 488–506, 2002(11).

Ashmead, D. H., Guth, D., Wall, R. S., Long, R. G., & Ponchillia, P. E. (2005). Street Crossing by Sighted and Blind Pedestrians at a Modern Roundabout. Journal of Transportation Engineering, 131(11), 812-821.

Baker, L. D., & Reitz, H. J. (1978). Altruism toward the blind: effects of sex of helper and dependency of victim. Journal of Social Psychology, 104(1), 19.

Guth, D., Ashmead, D., Long, R., Wall, R., & Ponchillia., P. (2005). Blind and Sighted Pedestrians' Judgments of Gaps in Traffic at Roundabouts. Human Factors, 47(2), 134(118).

Harrell, W. A. (1993). The Impact of Pedestrian Visibility and Assertiveness on Motorist Yielding. [Article]. Journal of Social Psychology, 133(3), 353-360.

Hughes, R. W., Vachon, F., & Jones, D. M. (2005). Auditory Attentional Capture During Serial Recall: Violations at Encoding of an Algorithm-Based Neural Model? Journal of Experimental Psychology / Learning, Memory & Cognition, 31(4), 736-749.

Ramachandran, V. S., & Rogers-Ramachandran, D. (2005). How Blind Are We? Scientific American Mind, 16(2), 96-95.

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