ANALYSIS OF DRIVER BEHAVIOR IN VEHICLE FOLLOWING AND LANE CHANGING PARAMETERS ON URBAN MID BLOCK SECTIONS

Abstract

In mixed traffic situations, there is weak or no lane behavior of the driver much more complicated where vehicle and driver behavior show a huge difference between them. Road traffic driving behavior on urban midblock sections is one of the most complex phenomena to be examined particularly in heterogeneous traffic conditions. This is often attributed to the capacity of the road section and the traffic flow features at the macroscopic and microscopic level of a road section. Very few researchers have attempted to investigate these features in heterogeneous environments because of the lack of adequate information gathering methods and the amount of complexity involved. In this background, an access controlled mid block road section was selected for video data collection. The main objectives of this study include developing vehicular trajectory data and analyzing the lane changing and vehicle following behavior of driver on the mid block section considering the relative velocities and relative spacing between various types of vehicles under heterogeneous traffic conditions.  The videos were collected from urban roadway in the Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh. The length of the stretch is 120m and the width is 7.0 m. The data was extracted to know the variations in terms of longitudinal and lateral speeds, velocities, vehicle following and lane changing behavior of the drivers. The data extracted was smoothened by moving average method to minimize the human errors. Lateral amplitude of the vehicles of various types was analyzed. The study revealed that vehicles in the mixed stream, in general and in particular, Bikes and Autos particularly move substantially in the lateral direction.