Cooperative and Competitive Lane-Changing Behavior Characteristics of Urban Expressways

Abstract

This study investigated the cooperative and competitive lane-changing (LC) behavior characteristics with limited traffic resources. The behaviors were described based on previous research. Data were obtained using video capture on a pedestrian bridge and vehicle trajectory extraction software. The internal relations between trans-line ride distance and time were discussed. The acceptance gaps, speed changes of target vehicles, and lateral deviations of lag vehicles were analyzed. Based on the measured data, the probabilistic density functions on the acceptance gap of cooperative and competitive lane changing were obtained. The threshold of the acceptance gap was extracted through minimum value of overlap area method. Lane-changing probability choice model was established for different acceptance gaps. Results indicated that the threshold of the acceptance gap that can differentiate cooperative and competitive lane-changing behavior was 19.28 m. When the gap is greater than 30 m, the probability that the target vehicle chooses cooperative LC is more than 94.49%.