Study on the Effects of Refuge Islands on Pedestrian Crossing Behavior and Safety

This paper studies the effects of refuge islands on pedestrian crossing behavior and safety. A refuge island installed in Harbin city, China, was the research object, and the traffic operations before and after the installation were recorded using cameras. The computer vision and traffic conflict techniques were used to extract the red light running data, speed data, and traffic conflict data of pedestrians crossing. The effects of the refuge islands were analyzed via the before-after comparison method. The results show that the installation of refuge island has significantly improved the safety level of pedestrian crossing; in terms of behavioral characteristics, the pedestrians’ half-way crossing duration, the speed of pedestrians crossing during the green light period, and the proportion of pedestrians’ half-way red light violation have increased after the installation, indicating that more pedestrians are eager to reach the refuge island before completing the entire crossing with the safety island installed.