Empirical Evidence for the Look-Ahead Behavior of Pedestrians in Bi-directional Flows

Using the sample data obtained from a group of pedestrian experiments, a function formulating the velocity-density relationship of pedestrians and linear regression is proposed to provide empirical evidence for the look-ahead behavior of pedestrians in bi-directional flows. We find that the velocity of pedestrians is negatively correlated with not only the densities of the opposite-direction and the identical-direction pedestrians around them but also the densities of the same-direction pedestrians ahead of them. Moreover, the movement of pedestrians is most affected by other pedestrians moving in the same direction about 1 m ahead.