scholarly journals A Combined Simulation Approach to Evaluate Overtaking Behaviour on Two-Lane Two-Way Rural Roads

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Valentina Branzi ◽  
Monica Meocci ◽  
Lorenzo Domenichini ◽  
Margherita Calcinai

A significant percentage of road fatalities and injuries occur in the nonmotorway rural road network. One of the main causes of accidents on these roads is represented by overtaking, as, by its nature, it involves a risk of a head-on collision with oncoming traffic. The paper describes a combined simulation approach (driving simulator and traffic microsimulation) designed to examine the influence of different traffic conditions on passing manoeuvres on two-lane two-way rural roads. The main focus was the evaluation of the end of the passing manoeuvre because it reflects the risk of a head-on collision. In addition, the study aimed to assess the usefulness of the proposed combined approach in the ability to proactively and quickly diagnose traffic safety problems and consequently to evaluate appropriate solutions. The data collected with an interactive driving simulator on a sample of 54 participants have been used to adjust some input data of the traffic microsimulation software. A specific situation consisting of a stationary heavy vehicle obstructing the entire lane was repeated in both experiments. The analyses focused on time-to-collision (TTC), defined as the remaining gap between the passing vehicle and the oncoming vehicle at the end of the passing manoeuvre. The results showed that the type of manoeuvre performed is significantly influenced by the traffic condition. Furthermore, the manoeuvre is influenced by the gap between two successive vehicles in the opposite lanes. Focusing on the end of the manoeuvre, it was found how a traffic increase leads to a significant reduction of the TTC values. Furthermore, the comparative analysis conducted between the data recorded following the combined approach and those obtained using exclusively the input data of the microsimulation software supports the usefulness of the proposed methodology for conducting road safety analyses, especially in complex traffic environments where drivers’ behaviour plays a decisive role.

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominique Lord ◽  
Hamidou Mamadou Abdou ◽  
Antoine N'Zue ◽  
Georges Dionne

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (25) ◽  
pp. 1550148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Shi ◽  
Jin-Hua Tan

Heavy fog weather can increase traffic accidents and lead to freeway closures which result in delays. This paper aims at exploring traffic accident and emission characteristics in heavy fog, as well as freeway intermittent release measures for heavy fog weather. A driving simulator experiment is conducted for obtaining driving behaviors in heavy fog. By proposing a multi-cell cellular automaton (CA) model based on the experimental data, the role of intermittent release measures on the reduction of traffic accidents and CO emissions is studied. The results show that, affected by heavy fog, when cellular occupancy [Formula: see text], the probability of traffic accidents is much higher; and CO emissions increase significantly when [Formula: see text]. After an intermittent release measure is applied, the probability of traffic accidents and level of CO emissions become reasonable. Obviously, the measure can enhance traffic safety and reduce emissions.


2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Przybilla ◽  
Christian Kunze ◽  
Serdar Celik ◽  
Shachindra Dongaonkar

Author(s):  
T. Inagaki ◽  
M. Itoh ◽  
Y. Nagai

What type of support should be given to an automobile driver when it is determined, via some monitoring method, that the driver's situation awareness may not be appropriate to a given traffic condition? With a driving simulator, the following three conditions were compared: (a) Warning type support in which an auditory warning is given to the driver to enhance situation awareness, (b) action type support in which an autonomous safety control action is executed to avoid an accident, and (c) the no-aid baseline condition. Although the both types of driver support are effective, the warning type support sometimes fail to assure safety, which suggests a limitation of the human locus of control assumption. Efficacy of the action type support can also be degraded due to a characteristic of human reasoning under uncertainty. This paper discusses viewpoints needed in the design of systems for supporting drivers in resource-limited situations.


Author(s):  
Qing Cai ◽  
Moatz Saad ◽  
Mohamed Abdel-Aty ◽  
Jinghui Yuan ◽  
Jaeyoung Lee

With the challenges of increasing traffic congestion, the concept of managed lanes (MLs) has been gaining popularity recently as a means to effectively improve traffic mobility. MLs are usually designed to be left-lane concurrent with an at-grade access/exit. Such a design forms weaving segments since it requires vehicles to change multiple general purpose lanes (GPLs) to enter or exit the ML. The weaving segments could have a negative impact on traffic safety in the GPLs. This study provides a comprehensive investigation of the safety impact of different lengths for each lane change maneuver on GPL weaving segments close to the ingress and egress of MLs through two simulation approaches: VISSIM microsimulation and driving simulator. The two simulation studies are developed based on traffic data collected from freeway I-95 in Miami, Florida. The results from the two simulation studies support each other. Based on the two simulation studies, it is recommended that 1,000 feet be used as the optimal length for per lane change at the GPLs weaving segments with MLs. The safety impact of traffic volume, variable speed limit control strategies, and drivers’ gender and age characteristics are also explored. This study can provide valuable insight for evaluating the traffic performance of freeway weaving segments with the presence of concurrent GPLs and MLs in a highway safety context. It also provides guidelines for future conversion of freeways to include MLs.


Author(s):  
Donald L. Fisher ◽  
Robert Glaser ◽  
Nancy E. Laurie ◽  
Alexander Pollatsek ◽  
John F. Brock

Younger adults are overinvolved in accidents. Model high school driver education programs were developed in the 1970s in an attempt to reduce this overinvolvement. An evaluation of these programs suggested that they were largely ineffective. Recently, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has developed the first PC-based driver education program (Zero Errors Driving or Driver ZED) using real footage of risky scenarios. The hope is that younger drivers seeing these scenarios will learn to recognize risky situations in the real world before they develop. In an attempt to evaluate the Driver ZED program, the performance of 20 younger drivers is being tested on the University of Massachusetts' driving simulator. Ten of these drivers have been trained with ZED (the trained group) and ten have not seen the program (the untrained group). All 20 drivers must navigate a total of 24 scenarios that have been programmed on the driving simulator. Measures of driving performance were developed which can be used to discriminate between risky and nonrisky drivers. A preliminary evaluation of the performance of the trained and untrained subjects indicates that the trained subjects are performing more cautiously than the untrained subjects in some, but not all, scenarios (e.g., the trained subjects brake sooner when approaching a pedestrian crossing).


2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 60-66
Author(s):  
Nemunas Abukauskas ◽  
Egidijus Skrodenis

The results of lengthy thorough investigations into traffic safety situation show that the percentage of pedestrians getting involved in road traffic accidents on Lithuanian roads is significantly higher (more than 33 % of the total number of injury and fatal accidents) than that compared to the other European Union member-states. The article studies traffic safety problems and their factors causing the largest influence on the occurrence of these accidents. Considering valuable experience gained by foreign countries, investigation was carried out to establish general and main factors causing insufficient road safety conditions and significance of these factors to road safety. The article also shows the main activity improving road safety in Lithuania and discusses the effectiveness of strategic and local (temporary and long term) measures to improve conditions for pedestrian road safety.


Author(s):  
Mustafa Suhail Almallah ◽  
Qinaat Hussain ◽  
Wael K. M Alhajyaseen ◽  
Tom Brijs

Work zones are road sections where road construction or maintenance activities take place. These work zones usually have different alignment and furniture than the original road and thus temporary lower speeds are adopted at these locations. However, drivers usually face difficulty in adopting the new speed limit and maneuvering safely due to the change in alignment. Therefore, work zones are commonly considered as hazardous locations with higher crash rates and severities as reported in the literature. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a variable message signs (VMSs) based system for work zone advance warning area. The proposed system aims at enhancing driver adaptation of the reduced speed limit, encourage early lane changing maneuvers and improve the cooperative driving behavior in the pre-work zone road section. The study was conducted using a driving simulator at the College of Engineering of Qatar University. Seventy volunteers holding a valid Qatari passenger car driving license participated in this study. In the simulator experiment, we have two scenarios (control and treatment). The control scenario was designed based on the Qatar Work Zone Traffic Management Guide (QWZTMG), where the length of the advance warning area is 1000 m. Meanwhile, the treatment scenario contains six newly designed variable message signs where two of them were animation-based. The VMSs were placed at the same locations of the static signs in the control scenario. Both scenarios were tested for two situations. In the first situation, the participants were asked to drive on the left lane while in the second situation, they were instructed to drive on the second lane. The study results showed that the proposed system was effective in motivating drivers to reduce their traveling speed in advance. Compared to the control scenario, drivers’ mean speed was significantly 6.3 and 11.1 kph lower in the VMS scenario in the first and second situations, respectively. Furthermore, the VMS scenario encouraged early lane changing maneuvers. In the VMS scenario, drivers changed their lanes in advance by 150 m compared to the control scenario. In addition, the proposed system was effective in motivating drivers to keep larger headways with the frontal merging vehicle. Taking into account the results from this study, we recommend the proposed VMS based system as a potentially effective treatment to improve traffic safety at work zones.


2011 ◽  
pp. 339-346
Author(s):  
Uwe Großmann ◽  
Marcus Rechberger ◽  
Jan Blömer ◽  
Jürgen Bertling

Forests ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 681
Author(s):  
Róbert Babuka ◽  
Andrea Sujová ◽  
Václav Kupčák

Research Highlights: One of the priorities of the European Commission is to build up an effective circular economy based on recycling and multiple use of materials. Wood biomass is a renewable raw material and can be used several times in a cascading sequence. Each country has a unique situation regarding the availability and utilization of wood sources. Background and Objectives: The objective of this study was to analyze wood flow in the Czech Republic using the cascading principle of biomass use. The specific situation in the Czech Republic lies in a lack of valid and reliable input data from official statistics. Therefore, the reverse input method was applied. Materials and Methods: Input data analyses of roundwood sources and foreign trade were based on official statistical data. The calculation of raw wood volume consumption in primary processing was performed based on the data after our own correction and recalculation. It was then possible to build up a basic model of multi-stage cascade wood use. The input volume of roundwood was divided among all types of primary processing production using conversion factors. Results: Cascading use of wood (CUW) showed the level of efficiency of the resource. Official statistical input data and the reversed input data regarding raw wood volume entering wood processing revealed differences at a level of 27%. The overall CUW in the Czech Republic indicates a high rate of wood use in primary processing with low added value and in generating energy. Conclusions: The reverse input method reveals the real situation of wood consumption irrespective of the level of official statistical data. It is suitable to apply in an environment of incomplete or incorrect input data. CUW in Czechia showed an opportunity for increasing the efficiency of wood utilization. The structure of wood use needs to be optimized towards creating greater added value.


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