As pedestrian traffic fatalities continue to increase in this country, many researchers are looking for ways to improve safety. A recent study entitled “Effect of vehicle external acceleration signal light on pedestrian-vehicle interaction” is addressing this in an innovative way by improving the “communication loop” between car and pedestrian. (full citation: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-42932-2 Li, F., Pan, W. & Xiang, J. Effect of vehicle external acceleration signal light on pedestrian-vehicle interaction. Sci Rep 13, 16303 (2023))
The study looked a what impact an external signal light placed on the car would have on the interaction of car and pedestrian. The purpose of the signal light was to communicate one of three conditions: acceleration, deceleration, or constant speed. As the study stated, “This study aims to create a viable solution for vehicle–pedestrian interaction by designing vehicle acceleration signal light as an external human‒machine interface on the vehicle that can provide efficient communication and solve the challenge of vehicle–pedestrian interaction.”
An acceleration sensor determines what color light is shown on the external signal. The light would be red for accelerating, green for deceleration, or white for a constant speed. In fact this idea is not all that new. As the study’s authors noted that a patent was submitted back in 1920 by researchers using vehicle front signals to give feedback on the car’s braking status.
The results of the study showed that an acceleration signal light placed on a car allowed pedestrians to better understand the vehicle behavior and make safer street crossing decisions. Participants in the experimental group with external signal lights on vehicles demonstrated a significantly lower willingness to cross the street when the vehicle approaching them was accelerating. This improved accuracy in a pedestrian’s judgement of vehicle behavior can therefore lead to improved pedestrian traffic safety especially in areas where there is not a traffic light to control vehicle and pedestrian flows.
Another factor in this story will be the continued increase of self-driving cars. Without an acceleration signal light, will humans be better or worse at anticipating the behavior and motion of a car under the computer’s control? One would assume that the algorithms programmed (by humans) for driving behavior would lean toward the safety of pedestrians, but now the human-to-human, unspoken assumptions of behavior have been removed from the situation which undoubtedly contributed to some level of safety.