Effect of traffic density on drivers’ lane change and overtaking maneuvers in freeway situation-A driving simulator based study
2018
Objective : The aim of this study is to examine the effect of traffic density on drivers’ lane
change and overtaking maneuvers. The differences between drivers’ left and right
lane-changing/overtaking maneuvers were also investigated.
Method : A driving simulator experiment was conducted and 24 participants took part in this
experiment. Based on the driving simulation data, lane change frequency, time duration,
average speed and acceleration were extracted as key variables of lane change maneuvers; overtaking frequency, overtaking duration, initial overtaking distance and headway, instantaneous speed and acceleration before overtaking were analyzed as the key overtaking variables. One-way repeated measures ANOVA, Friedman test and Wilcoxon signed-rank test
were adopted for hypothesis tests with significance level of 0.05. Further pairwise comparisons were performed with a Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons.
Results : Some significant differences in lane change and overtake behaviors were observed
among different traffic densities: 1) both lane change and overtaking frequencies significantly
increase with traffic density; 2) the average lane change acceleration and instantaneous
overtaking acceleration significantly increase with traffic density; 3) as the traffic density
increases, the initial overtaking distance and headway decrease. As for the effect of the
directions of maneuvers: 1) the time duration of lane change and overtaking from right side
was significantly shorter than that from left side; 2) the right initial overtaking
distance/headway was smaller than that of left side; 3) the right instantaneous overtaking
acceleration was significantly higher than the left instantaneous acceleration.
Conclusions : The results showed that as traffic density increases, drivers’ intention for lane
change and overtaking is enhanced. Both initial overtaking distance and headway decrease with traffic density, which might influence road safety. In addition, drivers do not show a preference on the directions of lane change or overtaking according to the frequency. However, drivers tend to be more decisive and reckless when conducting the right overtaking because of a smaller distance/headway before overtaking, higher instantaneous acceleration and also a more restricted field of view compared with left overtaking.
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