Improving the Pedestrian’s Perceptions of Safety on Street Crossings. Psychological and Neurophysiological Effects of Traffic Lanes, Artificial Lighting, and Vegetation

Abstract

The effect that the physical characteristics of urban design have on the pedestrian’s perceptions of safety is a fundamental aspect of city planning. This is particularly so with street crossings, where the pedestrian has to make a decision. This paper analyses how pedestrians are affected by number of traffic lanes, lighting colour temperature, and nearby vegetation as they cross roads. Perceptions of safety were quantified by means of the psychological and neurophysiological responses of 60 participants to 16 virtual reality scenarios (4 day and 12 night), based on existing urban design variables. The results showed differences between night-time and daytime scenarios, which suggests that there is a need to analyse both situations. As to the design guidelines, it was observed that safety is improved by reducing the number of traffic lanes and nearby vegetation, and by using a lighting colour temperature of 4500 K. However, the analysis of the variables showed that combined effects produce different results to those obtained from the analysis of individual elements. This result is essential information for urban managers in their assessments of whether particular interventions will improve crossing points.

Editorial for the Special Issue on “Experiencing the City: The Relation between Urban Design and People’s Well-Being”

“…People felt more stressed in spaces with more crowded pedestrian areas and at the intersection of traffic lanes (bicycles, cars). This finding is somewhat similar to the finding of Llinares et al [ 18 ] indicating that a higher number of traffic lanes leads to a lower perception of safety. With regard to cycling, they found that a wider bicycle lane leads to less stress compared to a narrow bicycle lane.…”

“…In a pilot study, a walking simulator with a locomotive technology was combined with bio-sensing data, eye tracking and gait sensor data. Moreover, Llinares et al [ 18 ] and Krzywicka and Byrka [ 17 ] also made use of virtual urbanscapes and soundscapes on the assessment of surroundings. These studies on virtual environments add another dimension to urban design and well-being, especially for capturing how citizens will experience and perceive new (upcoming) urban design interventions.…”

“…Other studies in this special issue focus on walking and cycling environments in public spaces and link this with experiences and perceptions such as stress and safety. For example, Llinares et al [ 18 ] analyzed the impact of design variables (number of traffic lanes, natural lighting, artificial lighting and vegetation) on pedestrians perception of safety when crossing a street. In order to measure perceptions of safety, 16 virtual reality scenarios (4 day and 12 night) were tested by means of the psychological and neurophysiological responses of 60 participants.…”

“…Future work in the field should analyze how people experience urban environments both during the day and at night because these outcomes could differ [ 18 ]. Another challenge for future research is to successfully integrate different data collection techniques (e.g., sensoring, surveys, geospatial data collection).…”

Perceived Safety and Pedestrian Performance in Pedestrian Priority Streets (PPSs) in Seoul, Korea: A Virtual Reality Experiment and Trace Mapping

“…First, to investigate perceived safety in PPS, a visual assessment survey was conducted using recorded virtual reality (VR) videos. Recent studies using VR have dealt with perception and cognition related to the urban environments [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ], and VR has been widely acknowledged as a research instrument [ 15 , 16 , 17 ]. In particular, VR could be used as a means to investigate the risk perception of pedestrians.…”