Evaluating the Effect of Unmanned Vehicles and Distracted Drivers of Automateed Vehicles on Pedestrians' Crossing Decisions in Virtual Reality

Various studies have shown that pedestrian decide whether they want to cross a road by communicating with the driver as well as by driving speed and time to collision. If the pedestrian loses the opportunity to communicate with an approaching vehicle due to self-driving cars, this can lead to a loss of confidence and trust. For fully autonomous vehicles, there are already several attempts to replace the communication with pedestrians using external human-machine interfaces (eHMI). This thesis investigates if eHMI are useful and focuses on distracted drivers and unmanned vehicles in mixed-traffic scenarios.