Simulation Design of Automatic Driving Dedicated Lane Based on VISSIM Secondary Development

As autonomous vehicle technology matures, more and more autonomous vehicles will be integrated into daily driving. This paper studied the impact of autonomous vehicles on traffic flow when a dedicated lane for autonomous driving is set on the outermost lane of the expressway. Based on VISSIM and MATLAB, a two-way eight-lane expressway model and a driving behavior model with automatic driving lanes are established. The Wiedemann model is used for simulating manual-driving behavior, and the CACC driving model is used to simulate the characteristics of autonomous vehicles. Autonomous vehicles which are controlled by the CACC model are designed to collect distance and speed data between themselves and the front and rear vehicles. To guarantee safety requirements, the CACC vehicles will maintain the space headway, while keeping their velocity at the driver’s desired speed. The design speed of the expressway is 100–120 km/h, the driving behavior of the vehicles is monitored in real-time, and the driving data is imported from VISSIM to MATLAB. After analysis and processing in MATLAB, the result shows that the expressway with the exclusive lane for automatic driving can operate normally, and the efficiency has been improved by 20%.