Heavy Duty Truck and Pedestrian Crashes at Signalized Intersections: Comparison of High-Vision and Low-Vision Cab Drivers’ Performance on a Driving Simulator

Abstract

Low-vision trucks are ubiquitous. Vision-related problems, especially blind zones, are the second leading cause of truck–pedestrian strikes in the UK and are implicated in 25% of fatal truck–vulnerable road user crashes in the U.S.A. High-vision truck cabs could potentially reduce the number of truck–pedestrian strikes. In this research, undertaken on a driving simulator, we evaluated scenarios in which drivers of low-vision cabs could see pedestrians entering and exiting from the crosswalk out, respectively, of the driver and passenger side windows, but not when the pedestrian was in the front blind zone of the low-vision vehicle. In theory, drivers of the low-vision cabs could determine that a pedestrian who had crossed from one side did not exit on the other side. Conversely, drivers of high-vision cabs could see, but only barely, the heads of pedestrians traversing in front as well as entering and exiting the crosswalk. In none of the 45 scenarios did the drivers of the high-vision cabs strike the pedestrian in front of their vehicle. However, in 39 of the 45 scenarios the drivers of the low-vision cabs struck the pedestrian. This indicates that direct vision to the sides is not enough by itself to allow drivers of low-vision cabs to predict the presence of pedestrians directly in front of them, whereas direct vision both to the front and the sides allows drivers of high-vision cabs to refrain from striking pedestrians directly in front, a situation that is common in the signalized intersection crosswalk scenarios tested in this study.