INTRODUCTION

 

Modelling of driver behaviour(or traffic flow) is an extremely important aspect of traffic science.Such models allow traffic engineers to better model and understand complex traffic scenarios.Such models also help transportation planners in equipping them with more realistic macroscopic relations between key traffic parameters.

However, development of such models is not easy as driver behaviour at microscopic level is complex and affected by various features of road environment,like width of road, curvature of the road,encroachments,actions of other vehicles, etc.Possibly, due to the complexity involved there is a severe lack of models of driver behaviour in the literature. The only kind of model which exist, and are worth looking into is the car-following models. These models, however,have limited applications as a general model of driver behaviour as they can only model the longitudinal interaction between vehicles moving in a single lane in the same direction.This limitation of such models render them almost useless in situations like in India where lane discipline is a myth and vehicles are never solely affected by only vehicles moving ahead of them.

The above factors motivate the work described in this project. Hence an attempt is made to develop a macroscopic model of driver behaviour during overtaking. It is envisaged that such a model will be able to incorporate all possible interactions while predicting the actions of a driver during overtaking. Results using the suggested model for various driving scenarios shall be presented, which will show that the proposed model is a viable way of predicting driver's action and can form the seed for a more complete and versatile model of driver behaviour.

PROBLEM STATEMENT and SCOPE

In this project an attempt is made to study and model the behaviours of drivers (especially the overtaking behaviour).

Understanding of behaviour:

While driving, driver's behaviour is affected by different aspects of the road environment like road width, road encroachment, movements of other vehicles on road etc.A driver's actions, it is assumed are motivated by two different considerations:
(i) the need to reach his destination within a reasonable period of time, and
(ii) the need to reach destination safely.
The driver satisfies the above considerations by maneuvering his vehicle through steering as well as through changes in the speed by either accelerating or decelerating.
Thus, the behaviour of a driver can be studied by looking at two distinct features:
(i) The postion of the vehicle(driven by the test driver) on the road as the vehicle moves ahead.
(ii)The speed of the vehicle as the vehicle moves.

Certain specific road conditions are to be studied and modelled as this is too vast an area to be covered completely in a course project. The concepts that shall be used in developing the model is, however, general and can be extended to model all different road conditions.

Scope of study

Following scenarios are to be studied:

• Driver behaviour on empty roads of varying widths,
• The effect of static obstacles on the road on the driver behaviour,
• Driver behaviour in various car-overtaking situations.

/  Introduction  /  Literature Review  /  Methodology  /  Example/   Main Menu /  References  /