Lane Change Behavior Patterns and Risk Analysis in Expressway Weaving Areas: Unsupervised Data-Mining Method
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 150, Issue 11
Abstract
The occurrence of accidents in expressway weaving areas is significantly influenced by frequent lane change maneuvers. Acquiring the lane change behavior pattern characteristics of vehicles in this area can provide prior knowledge for autonomous vehicles when performing lane change maneuvers, which helps ensure the safety of autonomous vehicles. This study aims to extract lane change behavior patterns of vehicles in weaving areas, to analyze the distribution differences of patterns across different lane change maneuvers, and to explore risk characteristics during the lane change process. First, a lane-changing sequence segmentation method was designed based on the hierarchical Dirichlet process hidden semi-Markov model (HDP-HSMM) algorithm, taking into account the interaction with surrounding vehicles and risk factors. Second, the Gaussian mixture model latent Dirichlet allocation (GMM-LDA) algorithm was employed to cluster the segments and derive patterns of lane-changing behavior that include risk attributes. The trajectory data from the UCF SST dataset were used to validate the method framework and make an in-depth analysis. The results show that the behavior patterns obtained by this method are able to better describe the operational and risk states of the vehicle. Variations exist in the behavioral patterns of different types of lane change maneuvers throughout the entire process. Spatial distribution disparities exist in the behavior patterns of lane change maneuvers across various sections of weaving areas. The findings of this study provide behavioral characteristics of different types of lane change maneuvers in weaving areas, which might contribute to enhancing the accurate recognition of lane change behaviors by autonomous vehicles.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission Project “Key Technology Research and Application of Driver Abnormal Behavior Recognition” (Z221100005222021) and Beijing Key Laboratory of Traffic Data Analysis and Mining.
Author contributions: The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: study conception and design: Yinjia Guo, Xin Gu, Yanyan Chen, Jifu Guo; data collection: Yinjia Guo, Xin Gu; analysis and interpretation of results: Yinjia Guo, Xin Gu; draft manuscript preparation: Yinjia Guo, Xin Gu. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.
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© 2024 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Dec 21, 2023
Accepted: Apr 3, 2024
Published online: Aug 28, 2024
Published in print: Nov 1, 2024
Discussion open until: Jan 28, 2025
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Accidents
- Analysis (by type)
- Business management
- Data analysis
- Disaster risk management
- Driver behavior
- Engineering fundamentals
- Equipment and machinery
- Highway and road management
- Highway transportation
- Highways and roads
- Infrastructure
- Methodology (by type)
- Practice and Profession
- Public administration
- Public health and safety
- Research methods (by type)
- Risk management
- Traffic accidents
- Traffic engineering
- Traffic management
- Transportation engineering
- Uncrewed vehicles
- Vehicles
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