Study on car-following patterns in Singapore

• Main Author: Ho, Adeline YiXiang.
• Other Authors: Wong Yiik Diew
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/53923
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The study of car-following behaviour is of increasing importance to traffic engineering development, especially in recent years where the numbers of vehicles on the roads are rising. This study examines car following behaviour using both macroscopic and microscopic approaches of Singaporean car drivers on both open and tunnel sections of expressways. Three types of vehicle following are explored: car following car (C-C), car following light goods vehicle (C-L) and car following heavy goods vehicle (C-H).Instead of using headway, the gap between vehicles was used as an indication of car-following to explore the different driving behaviours of drivers in different speed class and different lanes. Action-point model was also developed under the microscopic driving behaviour. In general, Singapore car drivers display a more aggressive driving behaviour on open sections of expressway than in road tunnels. Drivers in road tunnels drive more carefully and maintain a further following distance. This study also concluded that there is a positive correlation between following distance and travelling speed, with the fast lane having a high proportion of vehicles having short gap between them. Drivers’ choice of following distance is also influenced by the type of vehicles that they are following and it was found that C-C gap was the shortest, followed by C-L and C-H. Hypothesis testing was done on vehicle gaps and the conclusion showed that driving behaviours were different in open expressway and road tunnel, which further support that drivers drive accordingly to the environments they are in.