Analysis of Vehicle Time Headway Distributions for Passenger Car and Commercial Vehicles Interaction

Abstract

AbstractTime headway is a fundamental and crucial aspect of any traffic system. Time headway is inextricably linked to the performance and safety analysis of traffic operations of the highways. To deal effectively with any given traffic system, a precise time headway measurement is imperative. The research aims to analyze the time headway distribution functions for Passenger Car (PC) and Commercial Vehicles (CVs) interaction for different leader–follower vehicle conditions. An Infra-Red (IR) traffic detector system was used to collect the vehicle class and time headway data from the four National Highway (NH) sections in India. The maximum-likelihood estimation, Kolmogorov–Smirnov (K–S) test, was used to determine the best-fit distribution function. This aided in characterizing and discerning the driver behavior in maintaining different headway distributions under diverse PC-CV interaction conditions. The detailed statistical findings show that the mean headway and the corresponding headway distributions under various vehicular interaction conditions vary from one another. Thus, implying that the interaction between the vehicles influences the pattern of time headway distributions under different traffic conditions. The reported time headway distributions can be used in the generation of vehicles using the microscopic traffic simulation software.KeywordsPassenger carCommercial vehicleTime headwayProbability distributionRural highwayMixed traffic