Prevalence of distracted pedestrians while crossing: a study of Malaysia’s situation

¹ Crash Safety Engineering Unit, Vehicle safety and Biomechanics Research Centre Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research, Kajang Selangor, Malaysia
² Faculty of Engineering, Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, National University of Malaysia, Bangi Selangor DE, Malaysia

^* Corresponding author: syazwan@miros.gov.my

Abstract

Pedestrian’s crashes account for approximately 7% of road death in Malaysia. Even though the percentage is smaller compared to motorcycle-related crashes, amount of road crashes involving pedestrians in Malaysia is a serious concern. The objective of this study is to establish the common type of distraction for Malaysian. Crashes among pedestrians usually highly recorded at straight road followed by inter-section road type. For that, study focusing on the type of distraction among pedestrians while crossing the road by using video recording method. Two type of road were selected observational field survey – signalized and non-signalized intersection. A video recording method was used to analyse the behaviour of pedestrians crossing with or without distraction. Approximately 375 samples were observed while crossing with various type of distraction such as eating, texting, mobile phone talking and others. The study found the highest distraction type observed among pedestrians is usage of electronic equipment-mobile phone with 84.8% followed by other type of distraction – smoking and talking with more that 5%. Mobile phone distraction cause a significant effect in term of time to cross which average time to cross was 14.77 second. The overall results provide a prevalence information that is useful in the development of countermeasures aimed at improving pedestrians’ safety.