Driver Behaviour Injection in Microscopic Traffic Simulations

Abstract

The individual behavior of drivers has a significant influence on the characteristics of vehicular transportation systems such as safety, capacity or traffic flow. Apparently, considering such behaviors in the scope of microscopic traffic simulations is inevitable in order to accom- plish simulations close to reality. In recent years, considerable efforts have been put into modeling longitudinal and lateral movements of vehicles or their lane-change behavior, respectively. However, sometimes it is nec- essary to deviate from the standard behavior prescribed by these mod- els in order to study the effects of exceptional situations in road traffic such as sudden braking maneuvers. This paper addresses this specific use case by introducing a generic behavior injection model, allowing for the integration of predefined driver behaviors into microscopic traffic simula- tions. Furthermore, it enables the reconstruction of real traffic scenarios by incorporating data gathered from vehicular measurement campaigns. The result is a simple, yet flexible model applicable to a wide range of microscopic traffic simulators.