Marilia Ropaka, “Investigation of traffic and safety behaviour of pedestrians texting or web-surfing”, Diploma Thesis, NTUA, School of Civil Engineering, Athens, July 2019.

The objective of this Diploma Thesis is to examine pedestrians’ traffic and safety behaviour while texting or web-surfing, when crossing signalized intersections. In order to compare the behaviour of distracted and non-distracted pedestrians, an experimental process through video recording was carried out in real road conditions, in three signalized intersections in the centre of Athens. For the analysis, three multiple linear regression models were developed to investigate the association of pedestrians’ speed and distraction caused by mobile use. Furthermore, binary logistic regression models were developed in order to determine the influence of distraction on pedestrians’ safety characteristics (near misses, trajectory, conflict among pedestrians). The application developed in this research pointed out that in high pedestrian traffic, mobile use not only decreases pedestrians’ speed, regardless of their age, but also increases their probability of being involved in an accident with an oncoming vehicle. Results indicated that distraction caused by texting or web-surfing had a negative impact on pedestrians’ main traffic and safety characteristics.