Management of Potential Conflicts between Pedestrians and Autonomous Vehicles

Pedestrians are the most vulnerable road users. There are a lot of studies regarding the interaction of pedestrians with conventional vehicles, but the way a pedestrian interacts with Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) still needs to be explored. Therefore, this study addresses identification, prioritization, and management of conflict situation types between AVs and pedestrians. For this purpose, an analytical hierarchical process (AHP) method is applied to analyze qualitative data sets of a questionnaire survey. The factors (e.g. decision making by AVs according to varying pedestrian behavior, limitations of the road infrastructure in terms of conflict generation, etc.) that cause these conflict situations are ranked and compared. The input is taken from the key stakeholders (professionals), and the results are analyzed using multi-criteria analysis method (AHP). It has been found that the most important factor to be considered is the decision-making ability of the AVs, according to the varying pedestrian behavior. Based on the ranking of factors, mitigation measures are recommended to eradicate the effects of the factors.