Empirical Analysis on the Effect of Gross Vehicle Weight and Vehicle Size on Speed in Car Following Situation

抄録

This study explores empirically how the gross vehicle weight (GVW) of a following vehicle and the size of leading vehicle will affect the driver behavior in controlling their speed under different compositions of leader-follower pairs in a car-following situation. A large sample of traffic and vehicular data for various vehicle types were obtained continuously using a weigh-in-motion (WIM) based transport data collection system installed at Federal Route 54 in Malaysia. Then, statistical analysis was applied to explore the driver behavior in controlling the speed in a car-following situation from two different perspectives: driver’s visual input and vehicle dynamics capability. The main finding of this study is that when we incorporate the vehicle dynamic’s capability in a car-following situation, the GVW of the following vehicle and the size of the leading vehicle were significant sources of variation in the following vehicle’s speed and relative speed, and their interaction influences the driver behavior in controlling the speed.