Modelling the heavy vehicle drivers' lane changing decision under heavy traffic conditions

Lane changing manoeuvres of heavy vehicles have significant influence on traffic flow characteristics of the surrounding vehicles. This influence is due to the physical effects that the heavy vehicles impose on surrounding traffic. This paper presents an exclusive fuzzy logic lane changing decision model for heavy vehicle drivers on freeways. The trajectory data which is applied in this study is under heavy traffic conditions. Then, the efficiency of the calibrated lane changing decision model is examined. The validation results show that the new fuzzy logic lane changing decision model could closely replicate the observed lane changing decisions of the heavy vehicle drivers.