Research on the effectiveness of monitoring mechanism for “yield to pedestrian” based on system dynamics

“Yield to pedestrian” at crosswalks is gradually becoming a popular issue in traffic engineering. In this issue, traffic management department (TMD), drivers and pedestrians form an evolutionary system, and they interact and influence each other therein. In order to analyze both the riskiness and effectiveness of this system, we propose a dynamical model based on evolutionary game theory, where TMD, drivers and pedestrians compete with each other. Interestingly, if penalty–incentive​ control is introduced, that is, both punishment and rewarding policy are executed by superior government, evolutionary outcomes indicate that all drivers choose to give way to pedestrians even without any supervision from TMD or pedestrians. Moreover, when the control strategy is absent, full cooperation of drivers can also be achieved given a certain supervision rate of TMD. We hope this finding can substantially improve the safety of pedestrians crossing roads.