DEVELOPING A NEW HYBRID SAFETY CAR-FOLLOWING MODEL

Abstract

For more than five decades, car-following models have been developed based on different theoretical backgrounds and conditions. The importance of these models belongs to their representation of longitudinal movement for any simulation model. Therefore, the accuracy of the car-following model is still the core of strength of any simulation model. For the purpose of this study, a hybrid car-following model has been developed to represent “go and stop” conditions. These conditions mostly occur in a weaving section. This model has been developed as a corner stone for a microscopic simulation model of representation of driver behaviour at a weaving section. A new condition that improves a driver behaviour in a situation at which the driver should not accelerate under specific condition as approaching from decelerated leading vehicle. Some assumptions of this model have been adopted from the CARSIMmodel. After developing this model using Visual Compact Fortran (version 6.5), the developed model has been calibrated with a set of field data from Germany. The results show that this model is more reasonable than other models such as Paramics, VISSIM, AIMSUNand CARSIMusing the same set of data. This model show significantly improvement in representing the reality than the others.