Assessment of pedestrians’ red light violation behavior at signalized crosswalks in Kathmandu, Nepal

Abstract

Disregarding the signal and crossing the road in haste or for other personal motives is a well-established trend seen in signalized crosswalks, particularly among pedestrians in lower-middle income developing countries such as Nepal. At signalized crosswalks, pedestrians are sequentially separated from vehicles (unlike unsignalized crosswalks) due to traffic signals. However, pedestrians’ signal violation especially red-light running can, in unfortunate circumstances, expose them to vehicles that might lead to fatalities. The current study assesses the red light violation behavior of pedestrians at signalized crosswalks in Kathmandu. Binary logistic regression as well as Kaplan-Meier survival analysis have been performed on 1790 pedestrians. The logit model results show that carrying a child/heavy load, crosswalk length, perceived traffic volume, pedestrian crossing speed, number of pedestrians waiting at the crosswalk, group crossing, and the remaining red duration until the green phase significantly affect pedestrians’ decision to commit red light violation or wait until green. This study also introduced a novel variable called perceived volume, which considers fluctuations in traffic flow and quantifies the traffic faced by pedestrians. The survival analysis results show that approximately 35% of the total pedestrians did not even consider waiting for the green signal after arrival (violated immediately). Both logistic regression and survival analysis confirm that pedestrians prefer to wait for green (comply with the signal) when the remaining red phase duration (until the green phase) is below 50 s; pedestrians tend to violate almost instantly when they face a remaining red phase duration of more than 100 s.

Keywords

• Pedestrians
• Red Light Violation
• Logistic Regression
• Survival Analysis
• Pedestrian Crossing Behavior