Impact of Splitter-Island on Pedestrian Safety at Roundabout Using Surrogate Safety Measures: A Comparative Study
, Koji Suzuki 3, Olakunle Oloruntobi 4, Muhammad Zaly Shah 1,5 and Siti Hajar Misnan 1
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article respects the rigors of a scientific paper and is divided into the following sections: Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Literature Review, Materials and Method, Results and Discussion, Conclusion and References.
The paper evaluates pedestrian safety in the absence or presence of physical separation islands.
We have observed that surface markings are important elements for traffic safety, as they significantly reduce the degree of deceleration required for pedestrian crossings.
Also, the lack of markings at pedestrian crossings causes more incorrect crossings.
Solutions for the safety of pedestrians are constantly being sought and studies are made for this purpose, as the authors of this article have also done.
4 pedestrian-vehicle conflict scenarios were analyzed.
Statistical analysis and TOPSIS were used. The discussions were well directed towards the chosen topic.
The figures are well made and are very explicit.
The conclusions drawn from the article are in accordance with the theme.
The bibliographic references are relevant for the proposed theme.
The suggestions I make are the following:
- to continue studies in this field with more extensive research leading to beneficial results for road users
- references with no. 30, 31 are missing from the text.
- to arrange the bibliography according to the editorial requirements of MDPI Journals.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
My comment on the work refers only to the discussion. The discussion lacked a comparison of the authors' results with other works. Please feel free to reword the discussion.
Author Response
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Please revise some typos in the paper (e.g. Section 3.5.1 has its title doubled). Discussion instead of dissociation. The enumeration of sections is wrong (starting from discussion).
Section 3.5.2 has several duplicate sentences, so please revise entire section.
In Section 3.5.2, please elaborate the equations and state their application.
Please explain the abbreviations PS and AS.
Reference item 1 has wrong sytax. References 30 and 31 don't have corresponding citations in the text.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your careful consideration. We are very delighted you read our manuscript carefully and provided us with very valuable feedback and comments. We judiciously evaluated all of your recommendations and made the appropriate adjustments to our work. We believe that our revisions addressed all of your concerns to the best of our abilities.
We appreciate your time and consideration and look forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
Author’s team
Comments
Point 1: Please revise some typos in the paper (e.g. Section 3.5.1 has its title doubled). Discussion instead of dissociation. The enumeration of sections is wrong (starting from discussion).
Response 1: Thank you for pointing out these. We revised all mistakes in manuscript.
Point 2: Section 3.5.2 has several duplicate sentences, so please revise entire section.
Response 2: Thank you for your constructive comment. We agree, beside duplicate sentences, the manuscript has duplicate citation as well. The section 3.5.2 has revised in manuscript as follow:
“The Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is a multi-criteria decision analysis method. Recently, this methodology has been increasingly used for safety programs in the traffic engineering field [17, 45-47]. This method possesses the ability to determine premium safety programs among several alternatives by aggregating indicators. Therefore, TOPSIS is applied to compare the PS and AS conditions by combining several SSMs and deciding which one performs better. The sex SSM indicators were used as the evaluation indices in the four vehicle-pedestrian conflicts scenario. This study assigns the entropy concept to weigh indices objective weights. In the four scenarios of vehicle-pedestrian conflict, the multiple objective decision matrix of TOPSIS was formed as X = (X)mn (m = 2, n = 6). To simplify the explanation of the result, the SSMs indicators were transformed to work in the same direction. Therefore, (X?? # ) is formed as a new multiple-objective decision matrix. The normalized matrix X?? ∗ is then computed using the following Equation:”
Please see section 3.5.2 of manuscript.
Point 3: In Section 3.5.2, please elaborate the equations and state their application.
Response 3: Thank you for this suggestion. It would have been more informative for reader to know about TOPSIS equation in details during reading this paper. However, we believe that manuscript has the necessary information about TOPSIS equation. Readers can easily found information about it using online sources. It seems slightly out of scope because TOPSIS is a broad topic in decision making area which can applied in several ways and methods. It could be used in many fields, and we just discuss its application in traffic safety fields.
Point 4: Please explain the abbreviations PS and AS.
Response 4: We are sorry for the inconvenience. The abbreviations explanation is modified in line member 95 and the rest of manuscript accordingly.
Point 5: Reference item 1 has wrong syntax. References 30 and 31 don't have corresponding citations in the text.
Response 5: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree, these references are missed in the text (cited as [3, 29, 32] in line number 178). It is also commented by reviewer1. It revised in same line number of manuscript as [3, 29-32]. Regarding reference item 1, it cited in line number 49 as multiple citation with reference item 2 and item 3 as [1-3]. We believe it arrange according to the editorial requirements of MDPI Journals.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
