Characteristics of lateral vehicular interactions in heterogeneous traffic with weak lane discipline

Heterogeneous traffic conditions prevail in developing countries. Vehicles maintain weak lane discipline which increases lateral interactions of vehicles significantly. It is necessary to study these interactions in the form of maintained lateral gaps for modeling this traffic scenario. This paper aims at determining lateral clearances maintained by different vehicle types while moving in a heterogeneous traffic stream during overtaking. These data were collected using an instrumented vehicle which runs as a part of the stream. Variation of obtained clearance with average speed of interacting vehicles is studied and modeled. Different instrumented vehicles of various types are developed using (1) ultrasonic sensors fixed on both sides of vehicle, which provide inter-vehicular lateral distance and relative speed; and (2) GPS device with cameras, which provides vehicle type and speed of interacting vehicles. They are driven on different roads in six cities of India, to measure lateral gaps maintained with different interacting vehicles at different speeds. Relationships between lateral gaps and speed are modeled as regression lines with positive slopes and beta-distributed residuals. Nature of these graphs (i.e., slopes, intercepts, residuals) are also evaluated and compared for different interacting vehicle-type pairs. It is observed that similar vehicle pairs maintain less lateral clearance than dissimilar vehicle pairs. If a vehicle interacts with two vehicles (one on each side) simultaneously, lateral clearance is reduced and safety of the vehicles is compromised. The obtained relationships can be used for simulating lateral clearance maintaining behavior of vehicles in heterogeneous traffic.