Behavior-based analysis of freeway car–truck interactions and related mitigation strategies

Freight trucks are an important component of the nation s highway traffic. Due to their physical and operational characteristics, they can significantly impact traffic system performance, safety, and the travel experience of non-truck drivers. Methodological gaps exist in the literature on modeling car–truck interactions that do not result in crashes, especially those resulting from non-truck driver behavior. This paper focuses on the modeling of the behavior of non-truck drivers in the vicinity of trucks to capture these interactions. This is done by quantifying a time-dependent ‘‘discomfort level’’ for every non-truck driver interacting with trucks in the ambient traffic stream. The driver socioeconomic characteristics and situational factors that affect this discomfort are identified through a stated preference survey of non-truck drivers and a preliminary analysis of the survey data using a discrete choice model. A fuzzy logic based approach is proposed to determine the en-route time-dependent non-truck driver discomfort level. This is used in conjunction with the car-following and lane-changing logics of a traditional traffic flow model to generate a truck-following model and a modified lane-changing model in the vicinity of trucks. An agent-based freeway segment traffic flow simulator is constructed using the extended microscopic flow modeling logic. It provides a simulation-based framework to analyze alternative strategies to mitigate car–truck interactions. 0191-2615/$ see front matter 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.trb.2004.06.002 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 765 494 2209; fax: +1 765 496 7996. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Peeta), [email protected] (P. Zhang), [email protected] (W. Zhou). 418 S. Peeta et al. / Transportation Research Part B 39 (2005) 417–451 Experiments are conducted to analyze the sensitivity of the discomfort level to the causal variables, and evaluate the effectiveness of alternative mitigation strategies. 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.