Modeling the impact of driving aggression on lane change performance Measures: Steering compensatory Behavior, lane change execution duration and crash probability

Abstract

The current study aimed to investigate the influence of driving aggression on lane change behavior. Drivers belonging to three levels of aggressive driving styles (aggressive, moderately aggressive, and non-aggressive) participated in lane change experiments, and 232 lane change maneuvers were recorded. Steering behavior during lane change maneuvers was investigated using three steering performance measures, including the standard deviations of steering angle, steering reversal rates, and maximum steering swerve. Three separate generalized estimating equation models were developed to analyze the effects of aggressive driving behavior on the standard deviation of steering angle, steering reversal rates, and maximum steering swerve. A Weibull accelerated failure time model with clustered heterogeneity was developed to analyze the effect of aggressive driving behavior on lane change execution duration. Additionally, to model the crash probability during lane change, a random effects logistic regression model was developed. The findings indicate that aggressive and moderately aggressive drivers completed lane changes 59% and 38% faster, respectively, compared to non-aggressive drivers. This implies a propensity for aggressive and moderately aggressive drivers to execute lane changes more swiftly than non-aggressive drivers. Aggressive drivers increased their standard deviation of steering angle, steering reversal rates, and maximum steering swerves by 180%, 60%, and 62%, respectively, compared to non-aggressive drivers. This implies that aggressive drivers engaged in extreme steering behavior as a compensatory measure for their reckless driving in order to avoid a collision during lane change maneuvering. However, despite their vigorous compensatory steering behavior, the crash rate (number of crashes observed) increased by 5.10 and 2.83 times for aggressive and moderately aggressive drivers, respectively, compared to non-aggressive drivers. The findings have implications for developing driving assistance systems and lane change simulation models.