Comparison of Driver Behavior by Time of Day and Wet Pavement Conditions
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 138, Issue 8
Abstract
This study uses the two-fluid model for traffic flow, to examine driver behavior during both wet and dry pavement conditions and various times of the day. It was found that parameters in the two-fluid model known to be strongly affected by driver behavior (particularly driver aggressiveness) were statistically different between wet pavement and dry pavement conditions. The results confirmed that drivers tend to behave more conservatively when the pavement was wet compared with dry. The parameters of the two-fluid model were found to be statistically different for the morning peak period from the midday and evening peak periods, the results of which indicated that drivers behave more aggressively during the morning peak. Although these findings have been observed in previous studies, they have not been quantified using traffic data. This study shows that the two-fluid model apart from being a measure of network performance may be able to unveil more about driver behavior. There is a strong possibility that the parameters of the model may be used by researchers as a surrogate measure of safety and could lead to a measure to evaluate aggressive driving.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the Department of Transportation, City of Orlando. We would also like to thank Jeremy Crowe, Charles Ramdatt, and Albert Perez from the City of Orlando. The authors would like to thank the thoroughness and insights provided by the anonymous reviewers that significantly improved the quality of this paper.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 138 • Issue 8 • August 2012
Pages: 1023 - 1029
Copyright
© 2012. American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 14, 2011
Accepted: Dec 20, 2011
Published online: Feb 21, 2012
Published in print: Aug 1, 2012
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