Effect of Five Driver's Behavior Characteristics on Car-Following Safety

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Dec 21;20(1):76. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20010076.

Abstract

Driver's behavior characteristics (DBCs) influence car-following safety. Therefore, this paper aimed to analyze the effect of different DBCs on the car-following safety based on the desired safety margin (DSM) car-following model, which includes five DBC parameters. Based on the Monte Carlo simulation method, the effect of DBCs on car-following safety is investigated under a given rear-end collision (RECs) condition. We find that larger subjective risk perception levels can reduce RECs, a smaller acceleration sensitivity (or a larger deceleration sensitivity) can improve car-following safety, and a faster reaction ability of the driver can avoid RECs in the car-following process. It implies that DBCs would cause a traffic wave in the car-following process. Therefore, a reasonable value of DBCs can enhance traffic flow stability, and a traffic control strategy can improve car-following safety by using the adjustment of DBCs.

Keywords: car-following safety; desired safety margin; driver’s behavior characteristics; sensitivity analysis.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Acceleration
  • Accidents, Traffic / prevention & control
  • Automobile Driving*
  • Automobiles
  • Computer Simulation

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFB1601100 and 2018YFC0807500), the Program of Hefei Science City of Beihang (BHKX-21-06), and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2019M660407), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52102447).