Driving Simulation Evaluation to Traffic Flow Characteristics and Driving Safety of Climbing Lane on a Rural Highway

Abstract

This study was conducted by means of a driving simulator experiment to examine the traffic flow characteristics and safety of a climbing lane on a rural highway. The 3D virtual scenarios were constructed by the design drawing and real surroundings with simulated traffic flows from VISSIM. Thirty-two subjects were selected to drive on the test road in the driving simulator under four scenarios. Some evaluation analyses were done on the basis of the simulation results of speed, track lateral position, acceleration and driving braking force. In addition some simulation experiments from VISSIM were done to find the threshold of traffic volume for the setting of climbing lane. The result shows that (1) there is a higher and steady speed after setting a climbing lane under usual traffic volumes, it reduces conflicts with cars from the opposite direction; (2) but this benefit will be reversed with traffic volumes approaching to saturated volume.