Increasing awareness of distracted pedestrians at railway level crossings with illuminated in-ground lights

Pedestrian distraction is a growing problem. Current signage at railway level crossings may not be effective for pedestrians distracted by mobile devices, as it is designed for users looking ahead when walking rather than looking downwards as when using a mobile. Illuminated in-ground lights are an innovative solution to address this issue but have not been evaluated for use with distracted pedestrians. We conducted a 2 (in-ground lights yes/no) x 3 (distraction task none/auditory/visual) repeated measures field study (N=34) at a railway level crossing to assess whether distracted pedestrians could detect illuminated in-ground lights and how this impacted on visual scanning behaviour. Pedestrians detected the lights as accurately when distracted (visually or auditorily) compared to when not distracted, and eye scanning behaviour of the rail tracks with the in-ground lights was the same as for non-distracted levels. This is the first study to suggest that illuminated in-ground lights could be effective in attracting the attention of distracted pedestrians at railway level crossings.