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Main Authors: Enan, Abyad, Mamun, Abdullah Al, Comert, Gurcan, Indah, Debbie Aisiana, Mwakalonge, Judith, Apon, Amy W., Chowdhury, Mashrur
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.02109
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_version_ 1866912518180438016
author Enan, Abyad
Mamun, Abdullah Al
Comert, Gurcan
Indah, Debbie Aisiana
Mwakalonge, Judith
Apon, Amy W.
Chowdhury, Mashrur
author_facet Enan, Abyad
Mamun, Abdullah Al
Comert, Gurcan
Indah, Debbie Aisiana
Mwakalonge, Judith
Apon, Amy W.
Chowdhury, Mashrur
contents Large trucks substantially contribute to work zone-related crashes, primarily due to their large size and blind spots. When approaching a work zone, large trucks often need to merge into an adjacent lane because of lane closures caused by construction activities. This study aims to enhance the safety of large truck merging maneuvers in work zones by evaluating the risk associated with merging conflicts and establishing a decision-making strategy for merging based on this risk assessment. To predict the risk of large trucks merging into a mixed traffic stream within a work zone, a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural network is employed. For a large truck intending to merge, it is critical that the immediate downstream vehicle in the target lane maintains a minimum safe gap to facilitate a safe merging process. Once a conflict-free merging opportunity is predicted, large trucks are instructed to merge in response to the lane closure. Our LSTM-based conflict prediction method is compared against baseline approaches, which include probabilistic risk-based merging, 50th percentile gap-based merging, and 85th percentile gap-based merging strategies. The results demonstrate that our method yields a lower conflict risk, as indicated by reduced Time Exposed Time-to-Collision (TET) and Time Integrated Time-to-Collision (TIT) values relative to the baseline models. Furthermore, the findings indicate that large trucks that use our method can perform early merging while still in motion, as opposed to coming to a complete stop at the end of the current lane prior to closure, which is commonly observed with the baseline approaches.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_02109
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Real-Time Conflict Prediction for Large Truck Merging in Mixed Traffic at Work Zone Lane Closures
Enan, Abyad
Mamun, Abdullah Al
Comert, Gurcan
Indah, Debbie Aisiana
Mwakalonge, Judith
Apon, Amy W.
Chowdhury, Mashrur
Machine Learning
Large trucks substantially contribute to work zone-related crashes, primarily due to their large size and blind spots. When approaching a work zone, large trucks often need to merge into an adjacent lane because of lane closures caused by construction activities. This study aims to enhance the safety of large truck merging maneuvers in work zones by evaluating the risk associated with merging conflicts and establishing a decision-making strategy for merging based on this risk assessment. To predict the risk of large trucks merging into a mixed traffic stream within a work zone, a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural network is employed. For a large truck intending to merge, it is critical that the immediate downstream vehicle in the target lane maintains a minimum safe gap to facilitate a safe merging process. Once a conflict-free merging opportunity is predicted, large trucks are instructed to merge in response to the lane closure. Our LSTM-based conflict prediction method is compared against baseline approaches, which include probabilistic risk-based merging, 50th percentile gap-based merging, and 85th percentile gap-based merging strategies. The results demonstrate that our method yields a lower conflict risk, as indicated by reduced Time Exposed Time-to-Collision (TET) and Time Integrated Time-to-Collision (TIT) values relative to the baseline models. Furthermore, the findings indicate that large trucks that use our method can perform early merging while still in motion, as opposed to coming to a complete stop at the end of the current lane prior to closure, which is commonly observed with the baseline approaches.
title Real-Time Conflict Prediction for Large Truck Merging in Mixed Traffic at Work Zone Lane Closures
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.02109