Game Theory Model Of Conflicts Between Pedestrians And Vehicles At Crosswalk

With the rapid development of economy and the accelerated process of urbanization in China, these years witness the continuing accelerating growth of vehicle amount. The tense relationship between vehicles and pedestrians in road resource, results in the deterioration of pedestrians’ travel safety and the high risk of pedestrian-related accidents, in which the contest for the road priority accounts for high percentages of the occurrence reason. Nowadays, the research of conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians has become one of the hot issues in the field of road safety. In this paper, the conflicts are analyzed from the perspectives of characteristic and mental condition of pedestrians and drivers, in order to unveil the fundamental causes for the conflicts considering the accident-involved participants and accident-influenced suffers.The paper first analyzed various factors which influence the pedestrian’s/ driver’s decision when they face the crosswalk, including the traffic environmental impact factors, pedestrians-related or driver-related factors, and natural conditions. In detail, factors such as the length of a crosswalk, the equipment of safety island, the vehicle type, the velocity of vehicles and pedestrians, the weather condition, are respectively discussed. These factors exert influence on decision making of pedestrians and drivers through influencing the judgment of safety and the toleration of waiting time. Based on definition of safety and delay, which are the two key factors of game players in their decision making, the calculating models of safety and delay in the scenario of pedestrian and driver passing through the conflicting areas in the crosswalk are constructed. According to the Static Bayesian game, the components involved in the game are confirmed. Furtherly combined the Von neumann- Morgan Stanley utility function features, which are explained risk preference in the theory of economics, the model of safety utility and time utility are developed with the consideration of different types of preference among pedestrians or drivers. The weights of safety utility and time utility in different types of pedestrians or drivers are calibrated, which further used in the constructing of payoff Matrix. With what have been discussed above, the Static Bayesian Game model under the scenario of pedestrians and drivers passing the conflicting area of a crosswalk is constructed.In the final section, by collecting samples from a crosswalk facility, equilibriums of different component ratios of participant types are calculated with the proposed game model. The results indicate that the driver with the time preference habits will lead to a potential threat to the pedestrian,and higher proportion of risk-taking pedestrian leads to the increasing potential risk of conflict, while lower proportion of risk-taking driver contributes to the high efficiency of crosswalk facility. Based on the calculating result of game equilibrium, consistent with the prevailing traffic rules at the same time, the policy suggestions are proposed for decreasing pedestrian accidents and enhancing the crossing behavior safety when they pass through the crosswalk.