Using Drift Diffusion Model to Analyze Cars' Lane Change Decisions behind Heavy Vehicles

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Li, Nachuan, Mahmassani, Hani S., Ahn, Soyoung, Srivastava, Anupam
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Li, Nachuan
Mahmassani, Hani S.
Ahn, Soyoung
Srivastava, Anupam
author_facet Li, Nachuan
Mahmassani, Hani S.
Ahn, Soyoung
Srivastava, Anupam
contents Heavy vehicles (HVs) pose a significant challenge to maintaining a smooth traffic flow on the freeway because they are slower moving and create large blind spots. It is therefore desirable for the followers of HVs to perform lane changes (LCs) to achieve a higher speed and a safer driving environment. Understanding LC behaviors of vehicles behind HVs is important because LCs can lead to highway capacity drop and induce safety risks. In this paper, a drift-diffusion model (DDM) is proposed to model the LC behavior of cars behind HVs. In this drift-diffusion (DD) process, vehicles consider the surrounding traffic environment and accumulate evidence over time. A LC is made if the evidence threshold is exceeded. By obtaining vehicle trajectories with LC intentions in the Third Generation Simulation (TGSIM) dataset through clustering and fitting them with the DDM, we find that a lower initial headway makes the drivers more likely to LC. Furthermore, a larger distance to the follower on the target lane, an increasing target gap size, and a higher speed difference between the target lane and the leading HV increases the rate of evidence accumulation and leads to a LC execution sooner.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_10733
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Using Drift Diffusion Model to Analyze Cars' Lane Change Decisions behind Heavy Vehicles
Li, Nachuan
Mahmassani, Hani S.
Ahn, Soyoung
Srivastava, Anupam
Applications
Heavy vehicles (HVs) pose a significant challenge to maintaining a smooth traffic flow on the freeway because they are slower moving and create large blind spots. It is therefore desirable for the followers of HVs to perform lane changes (LCs) to achieve a higher speed and a safer driving environment. Understanding LC behaviors of vehicles behind HVs is important because LCs can lead to highway capacity drop and induce safety risks. In this paper, a drift-diffusion model (DDM) is proposed to model the LC behavior of cars behind HVs. In this drift-diffusion (DD) process, vehicles consider the surrounding traffic environment and accumulate evidence over time. A LC is made if the evidence threshold is exceeded. By obtaining vehicle trajectories with LC intentions in the Third Generation Simulation (TGSIM) dataset through clustering and fitting them with the DDM, we find that a lower initial headway makes the drivers more likely to LC. Furthermore, a larger distance to the follower on the target lane, an increasing target gap size, and a higher speed difference between the target lane and the leading HV increases the rate of evidence accumulation and leads to a LC execution sooner.
title Using Drift Diffusion Model to Analyze Cars' Lane Change Decisions behind Heavy Vehicles
topic Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10733