Understanding Passenger Car-Heavy Vehicle Interactions and Conflicts on Roadways for Developing Proactive Traffic Safety Strategies

交通事故给社会造成重大损失，如生命财产损失、医疗费用、交通堵塞等。特别地，涉及重型车辆的碰撞通常由于碰撞对车身的更大冲击而导致更严重的伤害。由于大多数重型车辆的行驶速度低于轻型客车汽车，汽车司机往往会调整速度或改变车道，以避免与重型车辆发生冲突。这种驾驶员行为导致个人速度的高度变化，并增加了驾驶员错误和碰撞发生的可能性。因此，更好地了解汽车和重型车辆之间的相互作用和冲突，需要建立交通安全策略，以减少碰撞发生和伤害severity. Objective本研究是了解如何改变他们的行为时，他们在道路上发生冲突的汽车和重型车辆。这项研究将开发的驾驶员行为模型，反映现实世界中的车辆互动的基础上观察到的驾驶员的汽车跟随，车道变换和间隙接受行为的高速公路和平面交叉口。该研究还将使用基于驾驶员行为模型的交通模型来估计碰撞的概率和严重程度，该模型模拟了汽车-重型车辆混合流中的单个车辆运动。利用这些模型，研究将提出主动交通控制策略，指导驾驶员避免车辆冲突，防止碰撞发生。预防撞车事故将节省大量因严重机动车撞车事故而产生的社会成本。重型车辆安全性的提高还将提高货物运输的效率，促进国际贸易，并有助于加拿大经济的增长。

Traffic crashes cause significant losses to society such as life and property losses, medical cost and traffic congestion. In particular, collisions involving heavy vehicles generally result in more severe injuries due to higher impacts of collisions on vehicle bodies. Since most heavy vehicles move at lower speed than light passenger cars, car drivers tend to adjust their speeds or change lanes to avoid conflicts with heavy vehicles. This driver behaviour leads to high variations in individual speeds and it increases the likelihood of driver errors and crash occurrence. Thus, better understanding of interactions and conflicts between cars and heavy vehicles is needed to establish traffic safety strategies to reduce crash occurrence and injury severity.The objective of this research is to understand how passenger cars and heavy vehicles change their behaviour when they are in conflict on roadways. The study will develop the driver behaviour models which reflect real-world vehicle interactions based on the observed driver’s car-following, lane-changing and gap-acceptance behaviour on freeways and at at-grade intersections. The study will also estimate the probability and severity of collisions using the traffic model built on the driver behaviour models, which mimics individual vehicle movements in car-heavy vehicle mixed flow. Using these models, the study will propose proactive traffic control strategies which will guide drivers to avoid vehicle conflicts and prevent crash occurrence. Prevention of crashes will save a substantial amount of social costs incurred by severe motor vehicle crashes. The improvement of heavy vehicle safety will also increase the efficiency of goods movement, facilitate international trades, and contribute to growth of Canada's economy.