<p>Navigating crossings safely requires quick and accurate stopping decisions. Accidents at railway level crossings may result from internal factors such as pedestrian distraction or external factors such as the absence of effective safety devices. Although a wide range of safety systems is deployed worldwide at railway level crossings, little empirical work has examined how they support human perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes underlying action inhibition. In this study, stopping behavior was investigated using a stop-signal task with six different signal conditions designed from two theoretical perspectives: perception-action (PA) coupling, which emphasizes rapid motor responses to direct cues, and situation awareness (SA), which supports detecting, interpreting, and anticipating critical information. Participants performed an online task where they controlled a moving avatar and had to stop upon different signals, either in a simple task or while solving arithmetic problems as a distraction. Results showed that PA signals triggered the fastest reaction times but with higher error risk, while SA signals promoted safer but slower responses. More importantly, signals combining perceptual affordances with selected situational cues achieved the most effective balance, reducing collision risk without sacrificing speed. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the complementary roles of perception-action coupling and situation awareness in stopping behavior and provide practical, human-centered guidance for the design of safety systems at railway level crossings and other time-critical pedestrian environments.</p>