Modeling Car-Following Behavior on Freeways Considering Driving Style

To build more accurate and realistic freeway car-following models, driving characteristics specific to freeway car following should be considered. This study, therefore, analyzed three car-following models calibrated for different driving styles. A total of 5,900 freeway car-following events were extracted from 161,055 km of driving data collected in the Shanghai Naturalistic Driving Study (SH-NDS) database. Based on the fuzzy inference system built in this study, these car-following events were categorized as representing one of two styles: nonaggressive or aggressive. The two driving styles were visualized by using the t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) algorithm. The Gipps, Wiedemann, and intelligent driver model (IDM) car-following models were calibrated and validated for each driving style group. Using a genetic algorithm to analyze the calibrated parameters of the investigated car-following models, it was found that the model parameter values were related to driving style. When their performances were evaluated, results showed that the IDM performed best. The nonaggressive IDM and the aggressive IDM were used to simulate the car-following scenarios based on the same leading vehicle trajectories. The t-test and the F-test results showed that regarding both time gap and spacing gap, the differences of mean and variance are significant between aggressive and nonaggressive styles in nearly all of the simulated car-following scenarios. The mean spacing gap (nonaggressive: 38 m; aggressive: 30 m) and time gap (nonaggressive: 1.7 s; aggressive: 1.4 s) obtained from modeled car-following scenarios could be used directly in simulation software to show the characteristics of different driving styles.

Automated summary

This study analyzed three car-following models calibrated for different driving styles by categorizing 5,900 freeway car-following events extracted from a driving database. The results showed that the IDM model performed the best, and there were significant differences between aggressive and nonaggressive driving styles in simulated car-following scenarios.