Arrival-time judgments on multiple-lane streets: the failure to ignore irrelevant traffic

How do road users decide whether or not they have enough time to cross a multiple-lane street with multiple approaching vehicles? Temporal judgments have been investigated for single cars approaching an intersection; however, close to nothing is known about how street crossing decisions are being made when several vehicles are simultaneously approaching in two adjacent lanes. This task is relatively common in urban environments. We report two simulator experiments in which drivers had to judge whether it would be safe to initiate street crossing in such cases. Matching traffic gaps (i.e., the temporal separation between two consecutive vehicles) were presented either with cars approaching o…