Impact of Driving Behavior on the Traffic Safety of Highway Intersection

Traffic conflict studies have been widely used because the data of traffic conflicts can be collected and evaluated in a short period of time. Widespread studies have shown that there is close relationship between traffic accidents and traffic conflicts. Since the data of traffic accidents are usually inadequate and the application of traffic accident analysis often requires long periods of data accumulation, traffic conflict data are often used to substitute for traffic accidents in many studies on traffic safety of intersections. In the paper, traffic conflicts were used to evaluate the traffic safety of highway intersection. It is believed that driving behavior has close relationship with traffic safety. The paper classified driving behavior into five types. Because each type of driving behavior has different influence upon traffic safety, driving behaviors were weighted according to their type and comprehensive value of driving behavior was therefore formulated. Finally, the relationship between driving behavior and traffic conflict was established, which showed that driving behavior has great impact upon traffic safety at highway intersections.