Investigating the Safety of Pedestrians at Signalized Intersection Crosswalks in Left-Hand Driving Scenarios

In a developing nation such as India, the rapid increase in road traffic has led to more frequent encounters when vehicles and pedestrians travel through signalized intersections. In an Indian traffic scenario, a signal is designed such that, irrespective of the ongoing phase of the adjacent arms, the pedestrians of a given arm are in the walking phase. This leads to more frequent interaction of pedestrians with vehicles turning toward the right and left from the adjacent arm. In this scenario, pedestrian safety was assessed in this study using advanced trajectory-based data and the evasive actions taken by vehicles during potential pedestrian–vehicle conflicts. Further, the risk of pedestrian–vehicle conflicts was examined using the traffic conflict technique employing five key time-based conflict indicators: the postencroachment time, time to vehicle, deceleration to safety time, time to accident, and time to collision. The risk level of pedestrian–vehicle conflicts was categorized into high (A), medium (B), and low (C) levels using supervised machine-learning algorithms, such as support vector machine, K-nearest neighbors, and the random forest classifier. The proposed crash risk levels were further used to analyze the frequency of crashes at four- and three-legged signalized intersections when pedestrians interact with left-turning (LT) and right-turning (RT) traffic. The influence of conflicting vehicle type on the risk levels of pedestrian–vehicle crash was also assessed. The results showed that the maximum conflict of LT and RT vehicles with pedestrians is at a medium risk at the selected four-legged and three-legged signalized intersections, respectively. Also, a high crash risk was observed while pedestrians interacted with right- and left-turning two-wheelers at all the study intersections. Overall, the study’s findings may help to evaluate the potential crash scenario at crosswalks and assess pedestrians’ safety at signalized intersections in the left-hand driving scenario.