Pedestrian crosswalk overflow violation in China: Characteristics and countermeasure

The phenomenon that pedestrians do not walk in the crosswalk during pedestrian green is defined as overflow violation, which is illegal but common. Broadly varying crossing positions at far-side cross-section may result in widely distributed conflict points with left-turning and right-turning vehicles, which may cause the occurrence of severe conflicts. This paper proposes a model to estimate the overflow pedestrians’ crossing positions at the far-side cross-section of signalized crosswalk, which enables us to better understand pedestrian overflow violation behavior and finally facilitate their safety. After analysis, the intersection geometry and destination are determined as the critical factors causing pedestrians to overflow. And then, Weibull distribution is employed to describe the stochastic characteristics of overflow pedestrians’ crossing position distribution at the far-side cross-section. A crossing position distribution model which takes the crosswalk length, width and distance between crosswalk and destination into account is developed. The established model is validated by comparing the observed pedestrian crossing positions with the estimated crossing positions. The validation results suggest that the established model is capable of being adopted to estimate the overflow pedestrians’ crossing positions at far-side cross-section. Based on the model, countermeasure for overflow violation can be put forward to prevent pedestrians from walking outside the crosswalk.