“How do human beings behave under the suddenly hazardous situation?”-Characteristics of Stepping-out Behavior

The purpose of this study is to find characteristics of human behavior in the suddenly hazardous situation. In this study, the experiment was conducted in two virtual environments. 166 subjects (58 male and 108 female) joined. Two stimuli were presented to subjects at random. As a result, we confirmed some characteristics about escaping behavior. First, almost the whole subjects had difficulties to escape from falling stimuli than stimuli of head-on-collision. Secondly, escaping distance was shorter than expectation: no one could escape more than 90 cm. Thirdly, female subjects tended to protect their faces and heads using hands or arms. These results will be applied to measures of accident prevention.