Evacuation Behaviors of Wheelchair Users in a Right-angle Turn of the Width-limited Corridor

The evacuation characteristics of wheelchair users at the right-angle turn of a corridor were investigated experimentally with a focus on the effects of corridor width, wheelchair propulsion mode, and turning direction. The collision avoidance behaviors of two wheelchair users during the bidirectional encounters were also explored. Results indicate that corridor width shows influences on the evacuation performance of wheelchair users in the unidirectional experiments. In narrow corridors, wheelchair users exhibit longer trajectories, lower movement speeds, and higher absolute angular velocities, with the minimum speed occurring at the turn. Collisions with corridor boundaries become more frequent as width decreases, leading to abrupt speed drops and substantial directional adjustments. The pushing-assisted mode consistently yields shorter trajectories, higher movement speeds, and lower absolute angular velocities compared with the experiments under self-propelled mode, though this advantage diminishes in narrow corridors where width dominates the evacuation dynamics. In bidirectional evacuation experiments, inner-path wheelchair users typically yield to outer-path wheelchair users, resulting in lower speeds and, in some cases, longer evacuation times despite shorter trajectories. Collisions between opposing wheelchair users occur more frequently in pushing-assisted bidirectional experiments, whereas no collisions were observed under the self-propelled mode. These findings provide quantitative insights into the evacuation of wheelchair users in confined building corridors.