01558168

Component

Due to the more complicated traffic environment, developing countries have higher traffic heterogeneity than developed countries. Investigation on the traffic heterogeneity has more important meaning for developing countries. This paper focuses on a type of common traffic heterogeneity, the driving style heterogeneity. First, the authors conduct pre-survey on Chinese drivers’ understanding on driving styles and the main factors may influence their choices on the driving styles. The pre-survey obtains the five types of driving styles commonly used in real driving, safe distance style, close following style, desired velocity style, mechanical following style and spatial competition style. The drivers’ responses to the pre-survey also indicate that their choices on driving styles hugely depend on their state of mind, that is, whether they are in a hurry. Therefore, in the subsequent survey and analysis, the authors discriminate the two conditions for drivers, “in a hurry” and “not in a hurry”. The questionnaire including the characteristics of the drivers and their vehicles is designed and a total of 424 questionnaires are collected. After the analysis using the discrete choice model, the authors obtain some important conclusions. The effect of vehicle characteristics on driving style choices is not significant, while drivers’ characteristics including gender, personality, age, education are significant factors. No matter drivers are in a hurry or not in a hurry, most drivers tend to choose a safe driving style, and the tendency increases with the increment of age. In the condition of “not in a hurry”, giving drivers more education can improve their safety awareness, keep drivers more alert to the surrounding driving environment and reduce selfishness in driving. The mind state “in a hurry” will reduce the drivers’ choice probability of the safe distance style (up to 30%) and strengthen drivers’ competition consciousness on traffic resources. In addition, venturesome and partial venturesome drivers are the main drivers adopting unsafe driving style. When they are in a hurry, only 18% of partial venturesome drivers choose a safe driving style, and none of the venturesome drivers choose a safe driving style. This group of people is the key population causing traffic accidents and should be guided to adopt a safe driving style. Generally, female drivers pay more attention to safe driving than male drivers. However, female is more susceptible to their mind state: compared to “not in a hurry” condition, “in a hurry” mind state cause the choice probability of the unsafe driving style doubled for female, while the probability for male only increases 3%.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABE90 Transportation in the Developing Countries. Alternate title: Study on Driving Style Heterogeneity and Drivers' Driving Style Choice in China.

01550057

15-6030

English

24p

2015

Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Age groups; Behavior; Car following; Choice models; Developing countries; Following distance; Gender; High risk drivers; Low risk drivers; Personality

China

Highways; Safety and Human Factors; Society; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2015 Paper #15-6030

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 30 2014 2:01PM