Displaying Vehicle Driving Mode - Effects on Pedestrian Behavior and Perceived Safety

The type and amount of information pedestrians should receive while interacting with an autonomous vehicle (AV) remains an unsolved challenge. The information about the vehicle driving mode could help pedestrians to develop the right expectations regarding further actions. The aim of this study is to investigate how the information about the vehicle driving mode affects pedestrian crossing behavior and perceived safety. A controlled field experiment using a Wizard-of-Oz approach to simulate a driverless vehicle was conducted. 28 participants experienced a driverless and a human-operated vehicle from the perspective of a pedestrian. The vehicle was equipped with an external human machine interface (eHMI) that displayed the driving mode of the vehicle (driverless vs. human-operated). The results show that the crossing behavior, measured by critical gap acceptance, and the subjective reporting of perceived safety did not differ statistically significantly between the driverless and the human-operated driving condition.