Ropaka M., Nikolaou D., Yannis G., “Investigation of traffic and safety behaviour of pedestrians texting or web-surfing”, Proceedings of the 8th Transport Research Arena TRA 2020 Conference (Helsinki, Finland, 27-30 April 2020). Conference Cancelled.

The objective of this research is the investigation of traffic and safety behaviour of pedestrians texting or web-surfing. To achieve this objective, a pedestrian outdoor-environment experiment was carried out at three signalized pedestrian crossings in the center of Athens in Greece. Data collected from 142 distracted pedestrians and 412 non-distracted pedestrians were analysed in order to examine the differences between their behaviour. Statistical analyses were carried out using multiple lognormal regression and binary logistic regression models. The results indicated that distracted pedestrians have lower speeds than non-distracted pedestrians. Moreover, the probability of a near miss (distance between pedestrian and vehicle less than two seconds) for non-distracted pedestrians remains very low and almost equal to zero when pedestrian volume or pedestrian speed increase, while for the distracted pedestrians it is much higher and presents an increasing trend.