Modelling the lane changing decision of heavy vehicle drivers

Lane changing manoeuvres of heavy vehicles have significant influence on surrounding traffic characteristics due to the physical effects that the heavy vehicles impose on surrounding vehicles. These effects are the result of heavy vehicles‟ length, size, weight and the limitations in their manoeuvrability. This paper presents an exclusive fuzzy logic lane changing decision model for heavy vehicle drivers on freeways. The freeway trajectory data which is used in this study is under heavy traffic conditions. The trajectory data is used to develop the lane changing decision model for heavy vehicle drivers. To examine the efficiency of the heavy vehicle drivers‟ lane changing decision model, the number of estimated lane changing manoeuvres of heavy vehicles are compared to the observed number of heavy vehicle lane changing manoeuvres in real world. Furthermore, the estimated traffic flow characteristics are compared to the observed traffic flow characteristics in real world through microscopic traffic simulations. The obtained results show that the new fuzzy logic lane changing decision model could replicate the observed lane changing decisions of the heavy vehicle drivers better than the current lane changing decision models. In addition, using an exclusive heavy vehicle lane changing decision model could increase the accuracy of the microscopic traffic simulations in estimating the microscopic traffic flow characteristics.