  Human beings have to make numerous decisions every day, and these decisions
might be biased and influenced by different personal, social and/or
environmental variables. Pedestrians are ideal subjects for the study of
decision-making, due to the inter-individual variation in risk taking. Many
studies have attempted to understand which environmental factors (light colour,
waiting times, etc.) influence the number of times pedestrians broke the rules
at road-crossings, very few focused on the decision-making process of
pedestrians according to the different conditions of these variables, that is
to say their perception and interpretation of the information they receive.
This study used survival analyses to highlight the decision-making process of
pedestrians crossing the road at signalized crossings in France and in Japan.
For both light colours, we decided to carry out separate analyses for the first
pedestrian to step off the kerb and other individuals following him/her, as the
decisions underlying the departure of a first individual and those of the
followers are different, and the departure of the first pedestrians strongly
influences the decisions of other individuals. We showed that the probability
to cross the road follows three different processes: one at the red light, one
just before the pedestrian light turns green, and one after the light has
turned green. Globally, the decision of the first pedestrian to cross, whether
he or she does so at the green or at the red light, is influenced by their
country of residence. We observed a lower threshold for Japanese pedestrians
because they tend to follow their private or personal information. We identify
the use of cognitive processes such as risk sensitivity and temporal
discounting, and propose new concepts based on the results of this study to
decrease the incidence of rule-breaking by pedestrians.
