Sensitivity analysis on heterogeneity of driving behavior for evacuation studies and its impacts on traffic safety

The driving behavior of travelers has been found to be different in case of emergency conditions compared to normal traffic conditions. In this paper, we show how this different driving behavior, as well as the heterogeneity among drivers, has an impact on traffic safety. We do so by performing a sensitivity analysis on the model parameters representing the different (heterogeneous) driving behavior and investigating the impact of these variations on traffic safety. The analysis is conducted applying an evacuation simulation framework using S-Paramics. The results show that reductions in mean time headway and minimum gap substantially increase the number of potential safety conflicts. Also, it is found that variation in driving behavior plays a smaller, yet still important, role in traffic safety.