  China is the world's largest automotive market and is ambitious for
autonomous vehicles (AVs) development. As one of the key goals of AVs,
pedestrian safety is an important issue in China. Despite the rapid development
of driverless technologies in recent years, there is a lack of researches on
the adaptability of AVs to pedestrians. To fill the gap, this study would
discuss the adaptability of current driverless technologies to China urban
pedestrians by reviewing the latest researches. The paper firstly analyzed
typical Chinese pedestrian behaviors and summarized the safety demands of
pedestrians for AVs through articles and open database data, which are worked
as the evaluation criteria. Then, corresponding driverless technologies are
carefully reviewed. Finally, the adaptability would be given combining the
above analyses. Our review found that autonomous vehicles have trouble in the
occluded pedestrian environment and Chinese pedestrians do not accept AVs well.
And more explorations should be conducted on standard human-machine
interaction, interaction information overload avoidance, occluded pedestrians
detection and nation-based receptivity research. The conclusions are very
useful for motor corporations and driverless car researchers to place more
attention on the complexity of the Chinese pedestrian environment, for
transportation experts to protect pedestrian safety in the context of AVs, and
for governors to think about making new pedestrians policies to welcome the
upcoming driverless cars.
