On the number of freeway lanes and its positive or negative effect on safety

TL;DR

This study investigates how the number of lanes and shoulder presence on freeways influence accident rates, using an extended traffic model and simulations to identify optimal safety configurations.

Contribution

It extends the intelligent driver model to simulate accidents and analyzes the impact of lane number and shoulders on freeway safety.

Findings

More lanes can increase or decrease accidents depending on the accident type.

Shoulder presence has a variable effect on accident rates.

Simulation results suggest an optimal number of lanes for safety.

Abstract

We address the 80-year-old question of whether a freeway with more lanes results in fewer or more accidents. For finding the optimally safe number of lanes, in particular, we look at three types of accidents that are prevalent on urban freeways, namely "following too closely", "driver inattention", and "unsafe change of lanes". To do so we extend the intelligent driver model (IDM) to create a microscopic traffic flow model which is capable of producing accidents. We study the rate of accidents relative to a baseline 2-lane unidirectional freeway via Monte Carlo simulation. For each simulation instance we create a starting configuration involving only a few cars over a short segment of the freeway and simulate the dynamics thereafter. Furthermore, we look at the number of shoulders present, and show that the presence of shoulders can positively or negatively affect the accident rate depending on the type of accident.