A training program was designed and developed for school-going children of 7-12 years old in order to help them improve their understanding of safety rules at critical street-crossing scenarios. The training is constructed of two modules that take place on two different platforms. The first one is a bilingual instruction-based video presentation that demonstrates street crossing safety rules and is viewed on a digital display. The second one (virtual "game" ) takes place in a virtual environment (VE), and the trainee wears a virtual reality (VR) head-mounted device (Oculus Quest) to physically walk on 30-ft long marked and unmarked crosswalks to put the lesson into practice. Eight types of scenarios called "levels" were developed to test and improve the player's decision-making ability. In addition, an experiment was designed to test the efficacy of the program. Trials were run, where a participant watched the video presentation between the two times they were allowed to play the game. The process required an average of 40 minutes per participant to complete. No participants went through simulation sickness according to the Simulation Sickness Questionnaire provided, and an experience survey conducted at the end of the trials showed that all participants found the training program natural and informative.

Vulnerable road users (VRUs, i.e., pedestrians and bicyclists) have seen an alarming rise in fatalities in recent years. School-age pedestrians in lower-income neighborhoods may be particularly at risk. This paper proposes a data-driven safe-systems approach to develop safety countermeasures for areas near elementary schools serving disadvantaged populations. A review of past literature on child-pedestrian training programs confirms that videos, lectures, and website-based training can provide children with vital information to improve their cognitive abilities relevant to walking safely. However, to improve pedestrian behavior on the road, children need to be safely exposed to traffic environments and practice interactions with traffic. Therefore, the use of virtual reality (VR) is recommended as a platform to introduce children to traffic interactions. Furthermore, the review of existing child-pedestrian training programs showed that most existing training programs (VR-based or otherwise) have an ad-hoc selection of roadway and traffic environment scenarios. Moreover, none of the training programs are designed to address safety issues faced by children in low-income neighborhoods specifically. To address these issues, this study gathered and analyzed crash data for VRUs around schools located in two metropolitan areas: Dallas County in TX and Tampa Bay in FL. Analysis of crash data identified the most prominent factors leading to most crashes as well as disproportionately more severe crashes. A VR-based child-pedestrian training program that involves children interacting with designed environments grounded in local crash data from disadvantaged areas is recommended for a more effective and equitable training platform.

Every year 41,000 cyclists die in road traffic-related incidents worldwide [47]. One of the most startling and infuriating conflicts that cyclists experience is the so-called "right hook". It refers to a vehicle striking a cyclist heading in the same direction by turning right into the cyclist. To prevent such a crash, this work presents CycleGuard, an acoustic-based collision detection system using smartphones. It is composed of a cheap commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) portable speaker that emits imperceptible high-frequency acoustic signals and a smartphone for reflected signal reception and analysis. Since received acoustic signals bear rich information of their reflecting objects, CycleGuard applies advanced acoustic ranging techniques to extract those information for traffic analysis. Cyclists are alerted if any pending right hook crashes are detected. Real-time alerts ensure that cyclists have sufficient time to react, apply brakes, and eventually avoid the hazard. To validate the efficacy of CycleGuard, we implement a proof-of-concept prototype and carry out extensive in-field experiments under a broad spectrum of settings. Results show that CycleGuard achieves up to 95% accuracy in preventing right hook crashes and is robust to various scenarios. It is also energy-friendly to run on battery-powered smartphones.

Cycling is a popular transportation mode for teenagers; however, statistics show that bicyclist fatalities on minor roads are higher for teenagers (44%) as compared to older bicyclists (28%). The implementation of automated vehicles (AVs) is expected to make roads safer. Nevertheless, very few studies have focused on cyclist-AV interaction, especially on teenage cyclist population. This study examines teenagers’ perceptions on infrastructures necessary to share roads with AVs. A virtual focus group study with twenty four participants evaluated six potential traffic infrastructure designs using discussion and survey questions. Participants’ data on demographics, generic cycling behavior, and personal innovativeness were collected. Results show that participants showing risky cycling behaviors on roads were more flexible in design guidelines compared to teenagers exhibiting positive cycling behaviors. Teenagers mentioned coherent, direct, safe, and comfortable being the most important factors to design supporting infrastructures for AVs. They preferred spacious bike lanes, clear markings, clearance between cyclist and vehicle lanes, and physical barriers separating AVs and cyclists.

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