Analysis on termination of pedestrians' gait at urban intersections

This paper analyzes pedestrian gait termination at a public urban intersection. Head-tracks of 183 uninstructed, randomly selected pedestrians are acquired by a wide angle stereo camera setup. Analyses of characteristic velocity patterns, deceleration and step parameters are conducted separately for children, adults and elderly people. Results show that stopping patterns at intersections comprise fast stopping within 2 - 3 steps, patterns of slightly slower stopping and increasing deceleration, and, most common, early intended stopping performed over a deceleration time of about 3 s, i.e. over about 6 steps, on average. Step analysis shows that stopping is a combination of step length decrease and step duration increase, especially for the last step.We measured significant lower steady state velocity and step length of the elderly, longer minimum deceleration times for the majorities of the children and of the elderly, and we observed that stopping behavior during the last 2 - 3 steps is very similar for all three classes.