Multiple-Leader Vehicle-Following Behavior in Heterogeneous Weak Lane Discipline Traffic: Fid-Bau Portal

Multiple-Leader Vehicle-Following Behavior in Heterogeneous Weak Lane Discipline Traffic

Budhkar, Anuj Kishor / Maurya, Akhilesh Kumar

Abstract Traffic stream of developing countries have a characteristic heterogeneous traffic stream moving in a weak or no lane-discipline. Vehicle-following behavior is in a staggered fashion, with following gap changing as per amount of stagger (centerline separation in lateral direction), vehicle type of leading vehicle and following vehicles and also their speeds. In denser traffic streams with no lane-discipline, the presence of more than one leading vehicle (placed side by side) may influence the behavior and position of a following vehicle. The following vehicle may maintain its speed and position depending on the combined effect of individual leading vehicles. In this paper, behavior of a following vehicle (FV) with two leading vehicles (placed side by side) is studied and compared with behavior of a FV with only one leading vehicle. Change in the relationships of longitudinal gap with staggering and average speeds due to the introduction of a second leading vehicle is calculated for various vehicle pairs. Effect of variation of the lateral distance between two leading vehicles on average longitudinal gap is studied. An attempt is made to represent impact of two leading vehicles on FV in the form of a single effective vehicle. It is observed that longitudinal gap decreases with the introduction of a second leading vehicle. As lateral distance between two leading vehicles decreases, longitudinal gap between leading and following vehicles increases. Impact of simultaneous interaction with two leading vehicles is presented in this paper. The relationships developed are useful for modeling car-following behavior in heterogeneous and dense traffic stream with no lane discipline.