The impact of automated vehicles (AV) on pedestrians’ crossing behavior has been the topic of some recent studies, but findings are still scarce and inconclusive. The aim of this study is to determine whether the drivers’ presence and apparent attentiveness in a vehicle influences pedestrians’ crossing behavior, perceived behavioral control, and perceived risk, in a controlled environment, using a Head-mounted Display in an immersive Virtual Reality study. Twenty participants took part in a road-crossing experiment. The VR environment consisted of a single lane one-way road with car traffic approaching from the right-hand side of the participant which travelled at 30 kmph. Participants were asked to cross the road if they felt safe to do so. The effect of three driver conditions on pedestrians’ crossing behavior were studied: Attentive driver, distracted driver, and no driver present. Two vehicles were employed with a fixed time gap (3.5 s and 5.5 s) between them to study the effects of time gaps on pedestrians’ crossing behavior. The manipulated vehicle yielded to the pedestrians in half of the trials, stopping completely before reaching the pedestrian's position. The crossing decision, time to initiate the crossing, crossing duration, and safety margin were measured. The main findings show that the vehicle's motion cues (i.e. the gap between the vehicles, and the yielding behavior of the vehicle) were the most important factors affecting pedestrians’ crossing behavior. Therefore, future research should focus more on investigating how AVs should behave while interacting with pedestrians. Distracted driver condition leads to shorter crossing initiation time but the effect was small. No driver condition leads to smaller safety margin. Findings also showed that perceived behavioral control was higher and perceived risk was significantly lower when the driver appeared attentive. Given that drivers will be allowed to do other tasks while AVs are operating in the future, whether explicit communication will be needed in this situation should be further investigated.

Most of cyclists’ fatalities originate from collisions with motorized vehicles. It is expected that automated vehicles (AV) will be safer than human-driven vehicles, but this depends on the nature of interactions between non-automated road users, among them cyclists. Little research on the interactions between cyclists and AVs exists. This study aims to determine the main factors influencing cyclists’ crossing intentions when interacting with an automated vehicle as compared to a conventional vehicle (CV) using a 360^◦ video-based virtual reality (VR) method. The considered factors in this study included vehicle type, gap size between cyclist and vehicle, vehicle speed, and right of way. Each factor had two levels. In addition, cyclist’s self-reported behavior and trust in automated vehicles were also measured. Forty-seven participants experienced 16 different crossing scenarios in a repeated measures study using VR. These scenarios are the result of combinations of the studied factors at different levels. In total, the experiment lasted 60 min. The results show that the gap size and the right of way were the primary factors affecting the crossing intentions of the individuals. The vehicle type and vehicle speed did not have a significant effect on the crossing intentions. Finally, the 360^◦ video-based VR method scored relatively high as a research method and comparable with the results of a previous study investigating pedestrians’ crossing intentions confirming its suitability as a research methodology to study cyclists’ crossing intentions.

Automated driving systems promise a tremendous amount of benefits. Especially when applied in the domain of public transport, economic and passenger advantages are thought to be manifold. As technology rapidly advances, and projects involving automated buses appear throughout the world, investigating how its users and surrounding road traffic interact with these novel technologies need to advance with a similar pace. However, up to now, a reliable and up-to-date overview of performed, running, and planned projects is lacking. Moreover, little is known about human interaction with automated bus systems, and what is known is not always reported. By means of a systematic review, an overview of the current state-of-the-art knowledge on the interaction between automated bus systems and its interactors is presented. Results of these studies are described and discussed, and implications are being made regarding future policies to be applied in this domain to safeguard safe interaction with automated bus systems.

Partially and fully automated vehicles (AVs) are being developed and tested in different countries. These vehicles are being designed to reduce and ultimately eliminate the role of human drivers in the future. However, other road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists will still be present and would need to interact with these automated vehicles. Therefore, external communication interfaces could be added to the vehicle to communicate with pedestrians and other non-automated road users. The first aim of this study is to investigate how the physical appearance of the AV and a mounted external human-machine interface (eHMI) affect pedestrians’ crossing intention. The second aim is to assess the perceived realism of Virtual reality based on 360° videos for pedestrian crossing behavior for research purposes. The speed, time gap, and an eHMIs were included in the study as independent factors. Fifty-five individuals participated in our experiment. Their crossing intentions were recorded, as well as their trust in automation and perceived behavioral control. A mixed binomial logistic regression model was applied on the data for analysis. The results show that the presence of a zebra crossing and larger gap size between the pedestrian and the vehicle increase the pedestrian's intention to cross. In contrast to our expectations, participants intended to cross less often when the speed of the vehicle was lower. Despite that the vehicle type affected the perceived risk of the participants, no significant difference was found in crossing intention. Participants who recognized the vehicle as an AV had, overall, lower intentions to cross. A strong positive relationship was found between crossing intentions and perceived behavioral control. A difference in trust was found between participants who recognized the vehicle as automated, but this did not lead to a difference in crossing intentions. We assessed the research methodology using the presence questionnaire, the simulation sickness survey, and by comparing the results with previous literature. The method scored highly on the presence questionnaire and only 2 out of 55 participants stopped prematurely. Thus, the research methodology is useful for crossing behavior experiments.