Longitudinal driving behaviour on different roadway categories: an instrumented-vehicle experiment, data collection and case study in China

A significant portion of the observed variability in roadway performance can be due to the difference and innate heterogeneity in drivers´ behaviour. Analytical models, stated preference data collection and studies and laboratory-based simulator experiments are developed to understand the driver behaviour for years. However, little has been done to fill the important gap between the survey/laboratory observed behaviour and the field observed behaviour. This study investigates drivers´ actual behaviour by conducting real-world field experiments in Beijing´s roadway system. In the experiment platform developed, instrumented vehicles are employed for the advanced data collection and analysis in order to understand the impact of roadway category on drivers´ longitudinal behaviour, that is, car-following and car-approaching. These behaviour dimensions are identified in this study and quantified by parameters including relative speed, leading vehicle speed, accelerator release, braking activation, distance headway, time headway and time-to-collision. The analysis suggests that the drivers´ behaviour variation heavily depends on roadway characteristics, which supplements further theoretical and survey-based behavioural research. The research findings provide insight for theoretical advances, evaluating driving assistance systems and roadway-specific incentive designs for traffic harmonisation, speed reduction, collision warning/avoidance, safety enhancement and energy consumption savings.