Learning to Car-Follow Using an Inertia-Oriented Driving Technique: A Before-and-After Study on a Closed Circuit

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that drivers can effectively adopt an inertia-oriented car-following strategy after a dedicated course, leading to smoother driving behavior in real and simulated environments.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence that a brief DI course can change drivers' car-following behavior from default to inertia-oriented in real circuit conditions.

Findings

Drivers showed reduced acceleration and deceleration after DI training.

Post-training drivers exhibited less speed variability.

The DI strategy was successfully adopted in real circuit scenarios.

Abstract

For decades, car following and traffic flow models have assumed that drivers default driving strategy is to maintain a safe distance. Several previous studies have questioned whether the Driving to Keep Distance is a traffic invariant. Therefore, the acceleration deceleration torque asymmetry of drivers must necessarily determine the observed patterns of traffic oscillations. Those studies indicate that drivers can adopt alternative CF strategies, such as Driving to Keep Inertia, by following basic instructions. The present work extends the evidence from previous research by showing the effectiveness of a DI course that immediately translates into practice on a closed circuit. Twelve drivers were invited to follow a lead car that varied its speed on a real circuit. Then, the driver took a DI course and returned to the same real car following scenario. Drivers generally adopted DD as the default CF mode in the pretest, both in field and simulated PC conditions, yielding very similar results. After taking the full DI course, drivers showed significantly less acceleration, deceleration, and speed variability than did the pretest, both in the field and in the simulated conditions, which indicates that drivers adopted the DI strategy. This study is the first to show the potential of adopting a DI strategy in a real circuit.