01336800

Component

https://doi.org/10.3141/2260-09

http://scholar.google.com...arah&publication_year=2011

A substantial proportion of the road network in most countries consists of two-lane highways. Available gaps for passing are a fundamental element in the operation of such highways. Providing passing opportunities is important for reducing the formation of vehicle platoons in the traffic flow, increasing the level of service, and improving safety. Passing opportunities also affect fuel consumption and emissions. Despite the importance of passing on two-lane highways, few studies have focused on exploring passing gap definitions when modeling passing behavior. Research was done to investigate various definitions of passing gaps, and these definitions were used to develop passing gap acceptance models. Data on passing maneuvers collected with a driving simulator were used to develop and calibrate three models. The generic structure of these models was composed of the drivers’ desire to pass and their gap acceptance decisions. The impact of traffic characteristics, road geometry, and driver characteristics was included in these models. The results show that the passing gap definition has a significant impact on the models’ ability to explain passing behavior. Moreover, the estimation results show that modeling a driver’s desire to pass the vehicle ahead has a statistically significant contribution in explaining passing behavior. Variables that capture the impact of the traffic conditions, geometric characteristics of the road section, driver characteristics, and the unobserved heterogeneity in the driver population were found to have a significant impact on drivers’ desire to pass and their gap acceptance decisions.

01362482

11-3169

English

pp 76-82

2011

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board

9780309222976

Print

Figures (4) ; References (36) ; Tables (3)

Behavior; Decision making; Drivers; Driving simulators; Gap acceptance; Passing; Traffic flow; Traffic models; Two lane highways

Critical gaps (Traffic)

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; I71: Traffic Theory

TRIS, TRB

Feb 17 2011 6:25PM

• Comparing Heavy Vehicle and Passenger Car Lane-Changing Maneuvers on Arterial Roads and Freeways
• Development of Extreme Value Distribution Method for Estimation of Expressway Capacity
• Empirical Analysis of Effects of Automated Section Speed Enforcement System on Traffic Flow at Freeway Bottlenecks
• Empirical Study of Impact of Icy Roadway Surface Condition on Driver Car-Following Behavior
• Estimating Acceleration, Fuel Consumption, and Emissions from Macroscopic Traffic Flow Data
• Fundamental Diagram of Traffic Flow: New Identification Scheme and Further Evidence from Empirical Data
• General Newell Model and Related Second-Order Expressions
• Low-Rank Unscented Kalman Filter for Freeway Traffic Estimation Problems
• Macroscopic Fundamental Diagrams for Freeway Networks: Theory and Observation
• Modeling of Travel Time Variations on Urban Links in London
• Multiregime Sequential Risk-Taking Model of Car-Following Behavior: Specification, Calibration, and Sensitivity Analysis
• Real-Time Solution of Velocity-Based First-Order Continuum Traffic Model with Finite Element Method
• Traffic Flow Forecasting and Spatial Data Aggregation
• Use of Skew-Normal and Skew-t Distributions for Mixture Modeling of Freeway Speed Data
• Variations in Parameters of Time Headway Models According to Macroscopic Variables, Fundamental Diagram, and Exogenous Effects
• Wiedemann Revisited: New Trajectory Filtering Technique and Its Implications for Car-Following Modeling