Pedestrians' street-crossing decisions compared between conventional and electric vehicles

To safely cross a road before an approaching vehicle, pedestrians need to accurately judge the vehicle's motion. Recent studies from our lab demonstrated that the noise emitted by a vehicle conveys important information about its motion, particularly in the case of accelerating approaches. Here, we compared street-crossing decisions between conventional (ICEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) with or without AVAS sounds. The experiment presented high-fidelity audiovisual VR simulations of approaching vehicles, based on recordings of real ICEVs and EVs. The presented velocity profiles included a large variation in acceleration rates, a = 0 to 4.4 m/s^2, and two velocities at the moment of the crossing decision (28 km/h versus 50 km/h). To investigate whether the lower sound level of EVs compared to ICEVs contributes to differences in crossing decisions, we additionally presented a condition in which the sound levels were matched between vehicle types. All experimental conditions were presented in two modality conditions (auditory-only and audiovisual). We compare the crossing decisions between vehicle types, velocity profiles and level profiles in terms of collision probabilities estimated from the measured psychometric functions. Preliminary results confirm differences between crossing decisions made in interaction with EVs compared to ICEVs, reduced in the level-matched conditions.