Factors Affecting Driver Yielding Behavior at a Mid-Block Zebra Crossing

摘要

Zebra crossing is one of an important pedestrian facility but a number of mid-block zebra crossings for pedestrians in Thailand are not yet utilized. Although the law requires drivers to yield the right-of-way to pedestrians at crossing, within a marked crosswalk in Thailand, a number of drivers still will not yield for a pedestrian. This situation affects the safety of pedestrians and needs urgent attention of the relevant authorities/agencies to improve the situation, before the zebra crossings becomes a safety hazard. The objective of this paper is to investigate the driver behavior at zebra crossings and the factors that are affecting driver yield behavior are also explored. The questionnaire was produced by a Google Form and the drivers were recruited using a snowball sampling technique via a Facebook and Application LINE. Friends and family of the researcher were invited to complete the survey via Facebook and Application LINE and were also asked to pass on the questionnaire to their friends and family. A total of 445 people completed the survey. The descriptive statistics and the logistic regression were employed for analysis. The binary logit model was used with six attributes: age, sex, education, experience, type of vehicle, and knowledge of pedestrian’s right-of-way law was developed. The results indicated that more than 50% of drivers do not have an understanding of the pedestrian’s right-of-way law. The developed model revealed that the yielding behavior of the driver depends on age, education, and knowledge of the pedestrian right-of-way law. The odd number of knowledge of the pedestrian right-of-way law is 1.588. For this reason, educating the drivers to the pedestrian right-of-way law is a beginning point to improve the safety for pedestrians at a zebra crossing in Thailand.