Browsing by Author "Harrell, W. Andrew"

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    Delays in traffic and motorist yielding to pedestrians
    (1992) Harrell, W. Andrew; Bereska, Tami
    A field experiment was carried out in which a pedestrian attempted to cross a busy residential street. Associations of the amount of time a motorist was delayed at a four-way stop and the volume of traffic with the decision whether to stop were assessed. For 190 motorists both delay and volume were significantly related to stopping. The longer the delay at the four-way stop and the greater the volume of traffic, the less likely the pedestrian was to elicit a stop. Regression analysis showed that delay was a better predictor of motorists' stopping. These findings are consistent with Piliavin's costs/benefits theory of helping behavior.
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    Gap acceptance by pedestrians
    (1992) Harrell, W. Andrew; Bereska, Tami
    The riskiness of street crossing behavior of 75 individuals and groups of pedestrians was observed. Gap acceptance, or the elapsed time before a pedestrian initiated a crossing at a marked crosswalk and the time until a vehicle passed through the crosswalk, was the measure of risk. Pedestrian groups containing at least one infant tended to choose longer gaps, i.e., they were less risky in their crossing. Gap acceptance was also more conservative as the mean age of the pedestrian group increased. Gap was not affected by the sex ratio of the group or the volume of traffic passing through the intersection.