V2P Collision Warnings for Distracted Pedestrians: A Comparative Study with Traditional Auditory Alerts

TL;DR

This work addresses pedestrian safety in the face of widespread smartphone distraction by comparing Vehicle-to-Pedestrian (V2P) collision warnings with traditional acoustic alerts in a real-world, fixed-track setting. The authors conduct a field experiment on a 180 m × 8 m campus walkway using a Husky A200 robot, a trivia-based engagement app, and eight warning/distraction conditions, measuring responses via camera and smartphone data. They introduce the SCR_v metric, $SCR_v = rac{v_{post}(t)}{ig\langle v_{pre}(t) \big\rangle}$, and apply paired t-tests to assess differences across conditions, finding that V2P warnings yield more reliable responses for distracted pedestrians, especially when wearing headphones. The results highlight the limitations of acoustic warnings under headphone use and support multimodal V2P-based approaches for urban pedestrian safety.

Abstract

This study assesses a Vehicle-to-Pedestrian (V2P) collision warning system compared to conventional vehicle-issued auditory alerts in a real-world scenario simulating a vehicle on a fixed track, characterized by limited maneuverability and the need for timely pedestrian response. The results from analyzing speed variations show that V2P warnings are particularly effective for pedestrians distracted by phone use (gaming or listening to music), highlighting the limitations of auditory alerts in noisy environments. The findings suggest that V2P technology offers a promising approach to improving pedestrian safety in urban areas

Figures (8)

• Figure 1: Scenario replicating urban areas where trams and share the road, and distracted may diagonally cross without noticing an approaching tram.
• Figure 2: Bird view of the experiment scenario(180x8m)(taken from Google Earth). The red markers indicate the key points, the yellow line represents the intended trajectory for the participants and the blue line exhibits the intended trajectory for the vehicle.
• Figure 3: General procedure followed during the experiment.
• Figure 4: System hardware.
• Figure 5: Three different screen captures from the trivia application (participant view). (a) Initial survey asking data from the participant. (b) An example of trivia question. (c) An example of trivia question displaying the warning ().