The velocity frequency distributions for various pedestrian crowds have been measured. Those for pedestrians on a crossing showed significant positive skewness. This was thought to be due to the challenge of traffic. Further measurements were made taking account of the number of challenges experienced by each pedestrian. This revealed that the skewness was not directly associated with the number of challenges, but that average speed fell with increasing challenge. Women experienced more challenges than men, and slowed down more than men for each successive challenge. If groups are isolated by sex and number of challenges, the Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution for a two dimensional gas is an adequate description for the pedestrians. /Author/
Samenvatting