Video-Recorded “Looked-but-Failed-to-See” (LBFTS) Accidents in the Junctions of Hong Kong

To determine causation and contributory factors of “looked-but-failed-to-see” (LBFTS) junction accidents in which the driver stated that “I did not see the pedestrian,” in-depth studies of 22 such accidents which had taken place in Hong Kong were conducted. The studied crashes were all video recorded by closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and/or dashboard cameras. Using the video recordings, these junction accidents were reconstructed at the scenes to determine the drivers’ views of the pedestrians and the sequence of events leading up to each accident. The results of the reconstructions and the police investigations, as well as the testimony of the drivers, were analyzed to identify causation and contributing factors of each accident. Attention error/visual search strategy (41%) and misjudgments of drivers (18%) remain the dominant cause of LBFTS crashes. However, it was found that eight crashes (36%) were attributed to the physical obstructions caused by the A-pillars of the vehicles, with the obscuration of the pedestrians being the major contributory factor. This study shows that reconstructions based on video recordings can provide detailed accounts of junction accidents to determine causations and to understand the individual characteristics of each accident. It also reveals A-pillar obscuration to be a cause of such accidents, and this provides a basis for further research on the A-pillar “blind spot.”