The effect of a lane change on a car-following manoeuvre: anticipation and relaxation behaviour

Abstract

Car-following and lane-changing manoeuvres are the most common driving behaviour on urban roads and highways. Although these two manoeuvres have been studied extensively, the effect of a lane change on a car-following manoeuvre remains elusive. Analysing these effects leads to integration of the car-following and the lane-changing manoeuvre which has been relatively neglected. A lane-changing manoeuvre causes the immediately following driver to deviate from common car-following models to accommodate the lane changer ahead; this is called anticipation and relaxation behaviour. These behaviours are transient states which occur between two car-following behaviours owing to the lane-changing manoeuvre. In this paper, a novel adaptive neurofuzzy model is proposed for simulating the behaviour of the follower vehicle during anticipation and relaxation behaviour. Comparison between the simulation results and the field data shows that errors in the proposed model are significantly smaller and the model can describe anticipation and relaxation behaviour properly. The anticipation and relaxation model can improve current car-following model applications to enhance the safety of vehicles such as driving assistant and collision avoidance systems.