Development of Cut-in Lane Changing Model Based on Observed Driver's Behavior in Uninterrupted Traffic Flow

Microscopic freeway simulation models project the uncertain values of performance measures for subject traffic conditions by explaining drivers' driving behavior with lane changing and car-following models. However, the existing lane changing models are limited to gap acceptance oriented passive behavior of drivers and not able to capture more-or-less aggressive driving behavior(e.g. cut-in lane changing) ordinarily obseved in field. This paper suggests the definition of cut-inlane changing and presents its characteristics based on the findings from two different freeway on- and off-ramp sections. In addition, this paper proposes a new lane changing model capable of handling both passive and active drivers' driving behavior for better performance of simulations. The proposed lane changing model was tested with Hanyang Simulatin (HYTSIM), a microscopic freeway simulation program developed for this study. The HYTSIM simulation results reflecting the performance of the proposed lane changing model were compared against the field data. The test results showed that the distribution of gaps collected when vehicles change lanes were statistically identical to the field data at 95% confidence level.