Abstract

Although road safety research has traditionally considered driving as the central mode of interest, recent work has turned to non-motorized modes, particularly cycling and walking, to analyze their conditions within traffic flow, and their interaction with vehicles. �Visual Approaches to Understanding Pedestrian Safety in Roundabouts� is a thesis developed by Mario Perdomo where pedestrian safety is targeted as the main object of study. The research includes two separate studies. The first, based on a Stated Preference (SP) research tool, aims to describe the preferences of pedestrians towards design and operational features of roundabouts, an intersection whose construction has become more frequent in recent years in Quebec. This study describes the process of designing, administering and analyzing the SP survey, offering as its main outcome relevant conclusions regarding pedestrian preferences in terms of safety in roundabouts. The use of substitution rates, estimated from the analysis of the SP survey, are suggested as a means to help guide the design of roundabouts with pedestrians in mind. The second study examines pedestrian-vehicle interactions in roundabouts using automatic pedestrian and vehicle tracking with videos. These interactions were analyzed, making it possible to observe actual pedestrian behavior in such intersections. The core of the thesis relies on two scientific papers: one published in Accident Analysis and Prevention journal in 2014; and the other submitted to the Transportation Research Board the same year.