A new study from the University of Tokyo has discovered a possible way to improve pedestrian safety, especially during busy commute hours. All it takes is a pair of large, googly eyes.
Yes, you’ve read that right– these fun and weird little trinkets can actually help avoid road accidents. The team recruited several people to participate in virtual reality (VR) scenarios to test if they would cross the road in front of a moving vehicle.
They found out that the subjects actually made safer or more efficient choices when the vehicle had… googly eyes on them. Note that the eyes were robotic though, and looked at the pedestrian as it registered their presence.
There was a difference between genders, which surprised Chia-Ming Chang, one of the members of the research team. “While other factors like age and background might have also influenced the participants’ reactions, we believe this is an important point, as it shows that different road users may have different behaviors and needs, that require different communication ways in our future self-driving world.”
Image credit: Chang et.al
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