Vehicle interaction behaviors model based on drivers characteristics at expressway-ramp merging area

The interaction behaviors between merging vehicles and mainline vehicles at expressway-ramp merging area are very complex, and the driver characteristic is an important factor that affects driver behaviors, however, the existing driver behavior models little consider the influence of driver own characteristic differences on the driver behaviors. In order to represent vehicles merging behaviors accurately, and overcome the shortcomings of existing models, firstly, a typical merging section is selected to investigate field data, the video processing software VEVID is used to get larger amounts of vehicle trajectory data, and a lot of factors that affect driver characteristics and vehicle merging behaviors are analyzed. Then, the driver type model is built by the fuzzy clustering method, and the driver type distribution data is as a key parameter to develop the cooperative probability model and the forced probability model. Finally, the microscopic traffic simulation system MTSS is taken as simulation platform to build merging simulation model, the real merging section traffic data in Guangzhou is used to validate the built model, the output results from the simulation system are compared with the field data, the satisfactory results indicate that the built merging model can be used to describe the complex vehicle interaction behaviors of merging sections.