Eye Movement Experiments Under Lateral Threats: Visual Attention and Risk Perception–Decision-Making of Drivers

Dooring accidents remain a major urban traffic safety hazard, often caused by insufficient visual attention to the lateral environment before door opening. Despite growing research on driver hazard perception, how the approach speed of lateral vulnerable road users modulates drivers’ visual attention allocation and risk perception–decision-making in stationary pre-door-opening scenarios remains poorly understood. This study investigates the visual and decision-making responses of stationary drivers under lateral threats of varying speeds. A static real-vehicle experimental platform was established to reproduce a natural roadside parking scenario, in which electric bicycles approached from the left rear at five constant speeds ranging from 5 to 25 km/h. Eye movement data from 20 drivers were collected and analyzed using a Markov transition model, Shannon entropy, and one-way ANOVA to extract Area of Interest (AOI) fixation, gaze sequence entropy, and decision time. The results show that drivers’ visual strategies exhibited a strong non-linear modulation by approach speed, shifting from direct window observation at low speeds, to structured mirror-based checking at intermediate speeds, and to distributed scanning under the highest speed; gaze sequence entropy decreased to a minimum at 20 km/h and rebounded at 25 km/h. Although mean decision time decreased with increasing speed, spatial–temporal analysis revealed that at higher speeds drivers made the “Dangerous” judgment only after the electric bicycle had already passed them, showing that a shorter decision time does not reflect a more effective response. These findings offer a methodological reference for future research on driver attention and risk perception–decision-making in pre-door-opening scenarios.