The Reality of Virtual Reality: A Comparison of Pedestrian Behavior in Real and Virtual Environments

Virtual reality (VR) can be a very effective tool to evaluate built environment to support improvement of pedestrian and other vulnerable road user safety. However, in order to draw actionable conclusions from VR it is important to understand the degree to which pedestrians’ perceptions and behaviors match across real and virtual environments. In this study, participants experienced equivalent real and virtual environments and performed similar tasks in each. Tasks included pedestrian’ intention to cross, estimation of speed and distance of an approaching vehicle, and the perceived safety and risk of crossing a road. Pedestrians’ presence was also measured in all environments. Result showed that there were no differences between the real and virtual environments for most of the tasks. Significant differences between real and virtual environments were observed in the estimation of speed and measures of presence. These results have important implications for using VR as tool to evaluate pedestrian safety in built environments.