Analysis of Driving Behavior at Expressway Toll Plazas using Driving Simulator

The objective of this study is to analyze the driving behavior at toll plazas by examining multiple scenarios using a driving simulator to study the effect of different options including different path decisions, various signs, arrow markings, traffic conditions, and extending auxiliary lanes before and after the toll plaza on the driving behavior. Also, this study focuses on investigating the effect of drivers\u27 characteristics on the dangerous driving behavior (e.g. speed variation, sudden lane change, drivers\u27 confusion). Safety and efficiency are the fundamental goals that transportation engineering is always seeking for the design of highways. Transportation agencies have a crucial challenging task to accomplish traffic safety, particularly at the locations that have been identified as crash hotspots. In fact, toll plaza locations are one of the most critical and challenging areas that expressway agencies have to pay attention to because of the increasing traffic crashes over the past years near toll plazas. Drivers are required to make many decisions at expressway toll plazas which result in drivers\u27 confusion, speed variation, and abrupt lane change maneuvers. These crucial decisions are mainly influenced by three reasons. First, the limited distance between toll plazas and the merging areas at the on-ramps before the toll plazas. In additional to the limited distance between toll plazas and the diverging areas after the toll plazas at the off-ramps. Second, it is also affected by the location and the configuration of signage and pavement markings. Third, drivers\u27 decisions are affected by the different lane configurations and tolling systems that can cause drivers\u27 confusion and stress. Nevertheless, limited studies have explored the factors that influence driving behavior and safety at toll plazas. There are three main systems of the toll plaza, the traditional mainline toll plaza (TMTP), the hybrid mainline toll plaza (HMTP), and the all-electronic toll collection (AETC). Recently, in order to improve the safety and the efficiency of the toll plazas, most of the traditional mainline toll plazas have been converted to the hybrid toll plazas or the all-electronic toll collection plazas. This study assessed driving behavior at a section, including a toll plaza on one of the main expressways in Central Florida. The toll plaza is located between a close on-ramp and a nearby off-ramp. Thus, these close distances have a significant effect on increasing driver\u27s confusion and unexpected lane change before and after the toll plaza. Driving simulator experiments were used to study the driving behavior at, before and after the toll plaza. The details of the section and the plaza were accurately replicated in the simulator. In the driving simulator experiment, Seventy-two drivers with different age groups were participated. Subsequently, each driver performed three separate scenarios out of a total of twenty-four scenarios. Seven risk indicators were extracted from the driving simulator experiment data by using MATLAB software. These variables are average speed, standard deviation of speed, standard deviation of lane deviation, acceleration rate, standard deviation of acceleration (acceleration noise), deceleration rate, and standard deviation of deceleration (braking action variation). Moreover, various scenario variables were tested in the driving simulator including different paths, signage, pavement markings, traffic condition, and extending auxiliary lanes before and after the toll plaza. Divers\u27 individual characteristics were collected from a questionnaire before the experiment. Also, drivers were filling a questionnaire after each scenario to check for simulator sickness or discomfort. Nine variables were extracted from the simulation questionnaire for representing individual characteristics including, age, gender, education level, annual income, crash experience, professional drivers, ETC-tag use, driving frequency, and novice international drivers. A series of mixed linear models with random effects to account for multiple observations from the same participant were developed to reveal the contributing factors that affect driving behavior at toll plazas. The results uncovered that all drivers who drove through the open road tolling (ORT) showed higher speed and lower speed variation, lane deviation, and acceleration noise than other drivers who navigate through the tollbooth. Also, the results revealed that providing adequate signage, and pavement markings are effective in reducing risky driving behavior at toll plazas. Drivers tend to drive with less lane deviation and acceleration noise before the toll plaza when installing arrow pavement markings. Adding dynamic message sign (DMS) at the on-ramp has a significant effect on reducing speed variation before the toll plaza. Likewise, removing the third overhead sign before the toll plaza has a considerable influence on reducing aggressive driving behavior before and after the toll plaza. This result may reflect drivers\u27 desire to feel less confusion by excessive signs and markings. Third, extending auxiliary lanes with 660 feet (0.125 miles) before or after the toll plaza have an effect on increasing the average speed and reducing the lane deviation and the speed variation at and before the toll plaza. It also has an impact on increasing the acceleration noise and the braking action variation after the toll plaza. Finally, it was found that in congested conditions, participants drive with a lower speed variation and lane deviation before the toll plaza but with a higher acceleration noise after the toll plaza. On the other hand, understanding drivers\u27 characteristics is particularly important for exploring their effect on risky driving behavior. Young drivers (18-25) and old drivers (older than 50 years) consistently showed a higher risk behavior than middle age drivers (35 to 50). Also, it was found that male drivers are riskier than female drivers at toll plazas. Drivers with high education level, drivers with high income, ETC-tag users, and drivers whose driving frequency is less than three trips per day are more cautious and tend to drive at a lower speed

Study on the Evolution Mechanism of Lane Change Decision in Urban Expressway Diversion Area

Urban expressway is the artery of modern urban traffic network, and the vehicle operation at off-ramp and diverging area affects the operation efficiency of the whole traffic system. The lane-changing game behavior between off ramp vehicles and going straight vehicles is very important in the whole driving behavior, and the lane-changing behavior between vehicles is easy to cause traffic accidents and stopping phenomena. To improve the driving efficiency in the diversion area and reduce the accident risk, by analyzing the process of the lane-changing behavior at off-ramp, this paper establishes a two-vehicle game model, solves the replicator dynamic equation according to the Dynamic Evolutionary Game Theory, uses MATLAB to calculate the evolution process and evolution speed based on different payoff factors, explores the influence of safety and speed on the stability of turn-out, and judges the evolutionary equilibrium point according to the determinant and trail of the Jacobi matrix. We build a realistic turn-out scenario and simulate it using the micro-traffic simulation software SUMO and it is found that: (1) The speed of different evolutionary equilibrium points based on speed payoff increased by 8.3% and 4.4% respectively compared with the speed of initial point. (2) The number of conflicts at the evolutionary equilibrium point based on the security payoff reduced to 22% of the initial point. (3) Compared with the initial point, the speed of the evolutionary stable point based on comprehensive payoff increased by 10.3%, and the number of conflicts reduced to 11% of the initial point. The simulation results show that the strategy of stable point of the evolutionary game model can effectively reduce the accident rate and improve the road operation efficiency

EFFECTS OF READING TEXT WHILE DRIVING ANALYSIS OF 200 HONOLULU TAXI DRIVERS ON A VS500M SIMULATOR

M.S. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018

Проверка эффективности вспомогательной системы для маневрирования в местах слияния автомобильных потоков в режиме реального вождения автомобиля

In the latest study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2018, it was published that human error is still considered the major factor in traffic accidents, 94 %, compared with other causes such as vehicles, environment and unknown critical reasons. Some driving scenarios are especially complex, such as highways merging lanes, where the driver obtains information from the environment while making decisions on how to proceed to perform the maneuver smoothly and safely. Ignorance of the intentions of the drivers around him leads to risky situations between them caused by misunderstandings or erroneous assumptions or perceptions. For this reason, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems could provide information to obtain safer maneuvers in these critical environments. In previous works, the behavior of the driver by means of a visual tracking system while merging in a highway was studied, observing a cognitive load in those instants due to the high attentional load that the maneuver requires. For this reason, a driver assistance system for merging situations is proposed. This system uses V2V communications technology and suggests to the driver how to modify his speed in order to perform the merging manoeuver in a safe way considering the available gap and the relative speeds between vehicles. The paper presents the results of the validation of this system for assisting in the merging maneuver. For this purpose, the interface previously designed and validated in terms of usability, has been integrated into an application for a mobile device, located inside the vehicle and tests has been carried out in real driving conditions.In the latest study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2018, it was published that human error is still considered the major factor in traffic accidents, 94 %, compared with other causes such as vehicles, environment and unknown critical reasons. Some driving scenarios are especially complex, such as highways merging lanes, where the driver obtains information from the environment while making decisions on how to proceed to perform the maneuver smoothly and safely. Ignorance of the intentions of the drivers around him leads to risky situations between them caused by misunderstandings or erroneous assumptions or perceptions. For this reason, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems could provide information to obtain safer maneuvers in these critical environments. In previous works, the behavior of the driver by means of a visual tracking system while merging in a highway was studied, observing a cognitive load in those instants due to the high attentional load that the maneuver requires. For this reason, a driver assistance system for merging situations is proposed. This system uses V2V communications technology and suggests to the driver how to modify his speed in order to perform the merging manoeuver in a safe way considering the available gap and the relative speeds between vehicles. The paper presents the results of the validation of this system for assisting in the merging maneuver. For this purpose, the interface previously designed and validated in terms of usability, has been integrated into an application for a mobile device, located inside the vehicle and tests has been carried out in real driving conditions

Effect of dynamic route guidance on urban traffic network under Connected Vehicle environment

Although Connected Vehicle technology is developing rapidly, connected vehicles (CV) are going to mix with the traditional vehicles (i.e., non-connected vehicles) for a long time. The effects of deploying CV on urban traffic systems are actually not clear. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the potential effects of route guidance under connected vehicle environment on an urban traffic network in terms of traffic mobility and safety. Microscopic simulation approach is used to conduct CV environment simulation and the rolling horizon approach is used for information updating among the connected vehicles. Meanwhile, driving behavior is modeled through aggressiveness and awareness of drivers. Traffic mobility for the road network was measured by average trip time and average vehicle trip speed. A surrogate measure, i.e., the time-to-collision involved incident rate for one kilometer driven, was used to assess the safety of the road network. Based on a real urban traffic network, the impacts of market penetration levels of connected vehicles and information updating intervals were studied. Simulation results showed that market penetration level of connected vehicles has little impact on the mobility and safety of road network. In addition, according to the simulation conducted in this paper, shorter updating interval is shown to be likely to lead to better mobility, while the safety of road network is likely to decline, under the assumptions embraced in the simulation. By contrast, the simulation also showed that longer updating interval is likely to lead to better safety and decreased mobility

An Exploratory Survey of Drivers’ Knowledge of Right of Way at Freeway On-ramp Merging Areas

Motor vehicle crashes are one of the leading causes of death in the United States. The most recent data available show that in 2006 there were almost 6 million police-reported motor vehicle crashes in the United States where a total of 42,642 people were killed and an additional 2.6 million were injured. The majority of these motor vehicle crashes occurred at intersections or within the intersection influence areas. Traffic conflicts occur at intersections due to traffic streams moving in different directions interfering with each other, and as a result they become areas with high potential for traffic crashes compared with non-intersection areas of the roadways. In order to reduce the potential conflict points, access to a freeway is only provided through gradeseparated intersection ramps (also known as interchanges). Freeways play a major role in providing mobility due to their high operational speeds and their being fully access controlled. Like other intersections, freeway-ramp areas have also been identified as locations highly prone to crashes as compared to other segments of freeways. A number of studies have been conducted to determine the causes and characteristics of crashes that occur at freeway ramps in order to devise and apply preventive countermeasures to reduce the occurrences of such crashes. Most of these studies have focused on developing and calibrating factors that contribute to traffic crash occurrences such as highway geometry, traffic volume, ramp location, and type of interchange. Other studies analyzed the type and patterns of crashes on urban freeways. For instance, a study by McCartt et al highlighted types and characteristics of ramp-related crashes, which showed that the type of crashes that occur at entrance ramps and exiting ramps are generally different. The most common type of crashes at exit ramps involve vehicles running-off the road while speeding. For the entrance ramps, sideswipe and cut-off crash types are the most frequent ones, with lack of yielding of right of way involving merging drivers from entrance ramps identified as a major cause. What is not clear, however, is whether at-fault merging drivers (from entrance ramps) know who had a right of way at the freeway merging area. In the present study, we assumed that most of these atfault drivers think that they have a right of way over drivers already on mainlines. To date, we have not found any study that has examined the factors that influence on-ramp merging drivers not yielding the right of way to freeway mainline traffic. In particular, the contribution of drivers’ knowledge of who has the right of way at the freeway-entrance ramp merge area has not been addressed. By determining what drivers know about right of way at the freeway merge area, including their driving actions, appropriate countermeasures such as education, engineering, and legislative actions can be implemented as future crash countermeasures. In addition, some states’ driver’s license testing handbooks inform new drivers to accelerate at on-ramps to attain the freeway mainline speed. This is also in accordance with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) guidelines whereby auxiliary (acceleration) lanes are provided in order to minimally affect the through traffic operations. Normally no yield sign is needed for ramps having standard-length acceleration lanes. The abovementioned reasons may also cause some on-ramp merging drivers to think that they share equally the right of way with the mainline traffic; this misconception may be one of the contributing causes of collisions at on-ramp merging areas. Furthermore, traffic safety studies acknowledge that certain demographic factors contribute to most of the motor vehicle crashes. For instance, gender and age differences in traffic crash involvement are well documented. The youngest and oldest drivers are more likely to be involved in motor vehicle crashes; similarly, younger males are more likely than younger females to be involved in motor vehicle crashes. On the other hand, females older than 50 years of age are more likely than the same age males to be involved in fatal crashes. Specifically, half of fatal crashes involving old drivers (80 years and older) tend to occur at intersections, and young drivers (16–25 years old) have a risk of being involved in traffic crashes to the order of 2.5 times higher than that of other drivers. Therefore, in the present study, we assumed that gender and age will be associated with drivers’ knowledge of freeway merging areas’ right of way. Particularly, the objective of this paper is twofold: to explore the knowledge of drivers concerning who has the right of way between the one on mainline lanes of a freeway and the one entering the freeway through the on-ramp junction lane and to explore the drivers’ actions when driving in the vicinity of freeway-entrance ramp merge areas, whether driving on the freeway mainline lanes or entering through the ramp junction lanes

Investigating the impact of a novel active gap metering signalization strategy on driver behavior at highway merging sections

A safe headway to the lead vehicle is important to reduce conflicts with merging vehicles from highway on-ramps. Previous research has outlined the advantage of gap metering strategies to yield sufficient space to merging vehicles and improve highway capacity during peak hours. However, prevailing gap metering systems fail to indicate the minimum required gap and leave it to the drivers’ judgment to adjust their headway. This paper proposes a new Active Gap Metering (AGM) signalization that helps outer lane drivers to adjust their headway to the lead vehicle when approaching highway ramps with incoming vehicles. This AGM signalization represents a combination of pavement markings and an innovative Variable Message Sign (VMS). The AGM system was tested alone and in combination with additional variable speed limits (VSL) in distinct environments of the Doha Expressway in the State of Qatar using a driving simulator. The driving behavior of 64 drivers was analyzed using repeated-measures ANOVA. The results showed that the AGM effectively influenced the drivers’ behavior on the right stream lane. Drivers did gradually increase the distance to the lead vehicle, which resulted in optimal headways to merging on-ramp vehicles. Most importantly, the minimum time-to-collision (TTCmin) to the merging vehicle was increased by an additional 1–1.5 s as compared to no treatment. The proposed AGM signalization can, therefore, be considered by policymakers to influence drivers’ headways at critical merging sections.The NPRP award [NPRP 9-360-2-150] from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of The Qatar Foundation). Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library

Research on the Safety Characteristics of Mixed Traffic Flow under Different Penetration Scenarios of Autonomous Vehicles

Since it will take time for vehicles to be fully automated, research on mixed traffic flow with different levels of vehicles will be the focus in the future. This paper takes L0, L1, L2, L3, L4, L5 vehicles as the research object, selects the Intelligent Diver Model (IDM), Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) model, F-STCA model and LC2013 model to construct the vehicle\u27s driving behaviour model, builds SUMO (Simulation of Urban Mobility) and Python co-simulation platform to conduct models simulation verification and safety analysis. The results show that: (1) The improved IDM model can realize the error caused by the heterogeneity of driver\u27s personality; the improved ACC model can improve speed and keep a small change range with the interfering vehicle; the improved F-STCA model can expand the vehicle\u27s lane-changing intention and reflect the driver\u27s driving uncertainty. (2) The increase of penetration can increase the number of lane changes in basic sections, but in merging area, they are proportional at low density and inversely proportional at high density; penetration can reduce the occurrence of traffic conflicts and change the distribution of Time-To-Collision (TTC). This paper can predict the evolution law of traffic flow under the new technology, and provide a reference for future traffic planning and management