Drivers' recognition of pedestrian road-crossing intentions: Performance and process

Drivers' recognition of pedestrian road crossing intentions is an essential process during driver-pedestrian interaction. However, compared with the rich observational findings on interaction behavior, little is known on drivers' performance in recognizing pedestrian intentions, as well as the underlying cognitive processes. To fill in the gap, this study evaluated drivers' performance in making judgments of pedestrians' road crossing intentions in recorded natural driving scenes. Experienced and novice drivers identified pedestrians as "will cross" or "will not cross" at some time-to-arrival while their eye movements were recorded. The results showed that experienced drivers were more conservative in discriminating whether a pedestrian would cross or not (preferred a "pedestrian will cross" judgment) and took a higher level of information processing of pedestrian intention. Regardless of driving experience, drivers had a higher detection rate, earlier detection, higher level of information processing and quicker response over pedestrians who intended to cross than those did not intend to cross. A quicker response was also achieved when the time-to-arrival was smaller. Analysis of eye movements showed attentional bias to the upper body of pedestrians when recognizing intention. These findings offer an initial understanding of the intention recognition process during driver-pedestrian interaction and inform directions for autonomous driving research when interacting with pedestrians. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.