Lane Change Maneuver Detection from Probe Vehicle DGPS Data

The impact of lane change maneuvers is fundamental to microscopic traffic flow theory. Due to the difficulty of tracking many vehicles over time and space, most of the published research in this area seek to find lane change maneuvers visually from wayside cameras. This paper presents a different approach, finding the lane change maneuvers of a probe vehicle itself using differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) data. We first use multiple probe vehicle trajectories through a study corridor to establish a reference trajectory from the median of all trajectories and this reference trajectory is used to define the position of the current lane. This approach eliminates the need for high-resolution maps accurate enough to capture the exact position of the individual lanes. Our lane change maneuver detection is then divided into two parts, controlling for the impacts of mandatory lane change maneuvers (MLC) and then for discretionary lane change maneuvers (DLC). MLC are detected by comparing the difference between the mean and median of lateral distance of all trajectories relative to a reference trajectory. After distinguishing all the MLCs, the DLC are found by setting lateral thresholds around the reference trajectory, i.e., when a given trajectory leaves this virtual lane. In the process we control for the impacts of GPS errors, such as multipath, arising from obstructions. DLC are then found by comparing the out-of-threshold-line time and length to a threshold acquired empirically from data