Verification and Calibration of Microscopic Traffic Simulation Using Driver Behavior and Car-Following Metrics for Freeway Segments

Details

• Creators:
  Medina, Juan C. ; Malekloo, Arman ; Kersavage, Kristin ; Porter, Richard J. ; Liu, Xiaoyue Cathy
• Corporate Creators:
  University of Utah ; VHB/Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc.
• Corporate Contributors:
  United States. Federal Highway Administration. Office of Safety and Operations Research and Development
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  Automatic Data Collection Systems Calibration Car Following Microscopic Traffic Flow Traffic Safety
• Publication/ Report Number:
  FHWA-HRT-24-103
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Edition:
  Final Report
• Corporate Publisher:
  United States. Federal Highway Administration. Office of Safety and Operations Research and Development
• Abstract:
  This research leveraged the Second Strategic Highway Research Program naturalistic driving study (NDS) datasets (https://insight.shrp2nds.us/) to improve understanding of driving behavior, particularly car-following behavior from passenger vehicles on freeway segments under good weather and daytime conditions, and proposed a calibration process for microscopic traffic simulation to ensure that simulated vehicle-to-vehicle interactions reflect naturalistic behavior (Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, 2020). The proposed calibration complements typical calibration practices focused on macroscopic metrics such as travel time, delay, and queues. More than 1,600 h of car-following data from more than 1,700 unique drivers were used as a basis to create driving behavior distribution targets and represent naturalistic driving in terms of vehicle spacing, acceleration, and jerk at different speed levels. The research team developed the portable, open-source Naturalistic Assessments of Car-Following Trajectories tool to read generic trajectories from microscopic simulation, extract car-following behavior, and perform statistical comparisons against the NDS targets to guide the calibration process. In addition, the research team explored the potential benefits of incorporating macroscopic measures derived from NDS into traditional safety modeling, which indicated that an increase in the traffic density variance, increase in the speed variance, and decrease in the mean vehicle spacing had significant effects associated with increases in multivehicle crash frequencies. Potential improvements to vehicle conflict data analysis using the Surrogate Safety Assessment Model were also evaluated, pointing to conflict frequencies and locations that more closely resemble those from observed crash events when simulated sites were calibrated for vehicle-to-vehicle interactions (FHWA, 2022).
• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  DTFH6116D00040L
• Collection(s):
  Federal Highway Administration
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:fb66b1d3ee57a7ca2dd6465e56a8b7baeaad2dbf1ab5e2b9112294f061b9165a648697bfd9513a9cf3752c7d9d6988f6616d6f8d881d9273db78f643ff502b4e
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/74233/dot_74233_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 2.44 MB ]