Evaluation of Pedestrian Gap Acceptance Behavior at Uncontrolled Midblock Sections under Mixed Traffic Condition

The unsafe pedestrian crossings at uncontrolled midblock sections are very common phenomena in India. At such locations, vehicles do not always yield to pedestrians, and many a time, pedestrians are unable to judge suitable gaps between two vehicles, thereby, expose themselves toward crash risk. The present study investigates pedestrian gap acceptance behavior by collecting video data from four different uncontrolled road sections in Silchar, Assam, India. Demographic analyses for gender and age groups of pedestrians are carried out. It is found that only gender group is significant to gap acceptance and female pedestrians accept higher gaps than males which implies that they are more safety conscious on road than male. A multilinear regression model (MLR) is developed for the prediction of the accepted gap. Results show that pedestrian gender, number of attempts made by pedestrians for crossing, and vehicular speed have significant contributions on pedestrian gap acceptance behavior.