Field Comparison of Two Types of Accessible Pedestrian Signals

Abstract

The effects of two types of accessible pedestrian signals on the street-crossing behaviors of 24 totally blind participants were directly compared in this research. One accessible pedestrian signal (APS) used a sound generator and vibrating hardware, which were integrated into the pedestrian push button (the Polara device). These sounds were heard from the near vicinity of the push button, and a different message or repetition rate was used to indicate the “Walk” interval. The second APS used pulsing light-emitting diodes to illuminate the message in the pedestrian signal head to transmit a message to a handheld receiver carried by the blind traveler (the Relume device). The handheld receiver provided a “Walk” or “Wait” message, designated by variable tones, which was audible only to the user. A control condition consisted of crossing without any APS device. Data were collected on crossing speed, the latency from the start of the walk and entering the crosswalk, the number of cycles missed, and the accuracy of the crossing. The results indicated that the time to cross the street was significantly shorter when participants used the handheld device than when they used the audible push-button device or crossed without any APS. There was no significant difference in crossing times between participants who used the audible push-button device and those who crossed without an APS under the control condition. The latency to start crossing was significantly faster when the participants used the handheld device than when they used the audible push button or crossed without an APS under the control condition. The number of missed cycles was significantly lower when the participant used either APS device than when the participant crossed without an APS device, and there was no difference in the number of missed cycles between the two APS devices.