Examine the pedestrian road crossing behavior in Kuwait

Abstract

This study sheds light on pedestrian and driver's behavior towards crossing in Kuwait. It examined the effect of different factors on pedestrian and vehicle violations at 10 locations in Kuwait including signalized, nonsignalized intersections, locations with/without pedestrian's bridge, and locations with/without pedestrian crossing signals. Four types of pedestrian's violations were observed; crossing outside the marked crossway, not obeying traffic signal, distracted crossing (eating, drinking, or using a smartphone while crossing), and not using pedestrian's bridge. For vehicle violations, two types were observed; not yielding to pedestrians and stopping over the marked crossway. The pedestrian and vehicle violations observed are considered as “violations” according to the existing Highway Code in Kuwait. A total of 24,393 pedestrian crossing violations were recorded over 40 days. Pedestrian violations were analyzed using a multinomial logit model while vehicle violations were analyzed by frequencies analysis. Video data were used for validation applying a trajectory‐based approach showing a high accuracy level of 98.85%. The results showed that all the studied factors; time of observation including weekdays and weekends, and peak and off‐peak hours, location of observation, demographic characteristics including pedestrian gender, and age, and site properties (with/without pedestrian's bridge and with/without pedestrian crossing signal) were significant and had a strong relationship with the type of violations. The results also indices the importance of providing pedestrian's bridge in locations with a high number of violations.