Safety impact of right-turn waiting area at signalised junctions conditioned on driver’s decision-making based on fuzzy cellular automata

Abstract

Right-turn waiting area (RWA) is a short demarcated queueing area ahead of the stop line that allows the right-turn vehicles at signalised junctions under the permissive filtering signal operation to proceed into the junction-box at the onset of full green signal phase. The RWA layout gives guidance to vehicle placement of turning vehicles which improves safety and mitigates vehicle queue overflow of the right-turn vehicles. RWA enhances the capacity of right-turn lanes while alleviating conflict severity in some cases. This study analysed the safety impact of the conflict between opposing straight-through vehicles and right-turn vehicles at RWA junctions in Singapore. A microscopic simulation model based on Fuzzy Cellular Automata (FCA) was developed. Field surveys were carried out to obtain the inputs for calibrating the fuzzy inference system. Different scenarios were analysed and discussed including different types of junctions with and without RWAs. The proposed model is found to be able to simulate decision-making of individual drivers at RWA or before stop line, such as exiting the queueing area or crossing the stop line when faced with different gaps and velocity of opposing straight-through vehicles.