This paper investigates pedestrians' traffic gap acceptance for mid-block street crossing in urban areas. A field survey was carried out at an uncontrolled mid-block location in Athens, Greece. Pedestrians' decisions and traffic conditions were videotaped in terms of the size of traffic gaps rejected or accepted, waiting times and crossing attempts and vehicle speeds. A lognormal regression model was developed to examine pedestrian gap acceptance. It was found that gap acceptance was better explained by the distance from the incoming vehicle, rather than its speed. Other significant effects included illegal parking, presence of other pedestrians and incoming vehicles’ size. A binary logistic regression model was developed to examine the effect of traffic gaps and other parameters on pedestrians' decisions to cross the street or not. The results reveal that this decision is affected by the distance from the incoming vehicles and the waiting times of pedestrians.

The spread of the new coronavirus COVID-19, has led to unparalleled global measures such as lockdown and suspension of all retail, recreation and religious activities during the first months of 2020. Nevertheless, no scientific evidence has been reported so far with regards to the impact on road safety and driving behavior. This paper investigates the effect of COVID-19 on driving behavior and safety indicators captured through a specially developed smartphone application and transmitted to a back-end platform. These indicators are reflected with the spread of COVID-19 and the respective governmental countermeasures in two countries, namely Greece and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), which had the most completed routes for users of the smartphone applications. It was shown that reduced traffic volumes due to lockdown, led to a slight increase in speeds by 6–11%, but more importantly to more frequent harsh acceleration and harsh braking events (up to 12% increase) as well mobile phone use (up to 42% increase) during March and April 2020, which were the months where COVID-19 spread was at its peak. On the bright side, accidents in Greece were reduced by 41% during the first month of COVID-19-induced measures and driving in the early morning hours (00:00–05:00) which are considered dangerous dropped by up to 81%. Policymakers should concentrate on establishing new speed limits and ensure larger spaces for cycling and pedestrians in order to enlarge distances between users in order to safeguard both an enhanced level of road safety and the prevention of COVID-19 spread.