Study On The Mechanism Of Low-speed Trucks’ Impact On The Capacity Of Multi-lane Freeway

With China’s rapid economic development, people’s traffic demand grows significantly, thus led to some freeways has been extended to two-way six-lane or two-way eight-lane. On multi-lane freeway mixed with low-speed trucks, the poor performance of low-speed trucks makes fast cars decelerate, following the trucks or overtaking lane change, because of the low-speed trucks’ height, length will impact on driving behavior of the drivers of the cars that following or overtaking the trucks. This will greatly reduce thecapacity of the freeway, cause significant waste of time and space. Therefore, the studyof the mechanism of the low-speed trucks’ impact on multi-lane freeways’ capacity has agreat meaning.Explaining the mechanism of the low-speed trucks’ impact on capacity is the ultimate goal of this thesis, in order to study the driving behavior under the influence of low-speed trucks. Firstly, from the drivers’ type and adjacent channel vehicles’ affects’ approach to the study the low-speed trucks’ impact on car-following behavior. In the car-following process, low-speed trucks would have different levels of impacts on different typesof drivers. At the same time, low-speed trucks on the adjacent channel also have an impact on car-following behavior. Secondly, lane-changing behaviors under the influence ofthe low-speed trucks have been studied, from the approach of lane-changing maneuvers, judgment of lane-changing and lane-changing process, studied the the impact of the low-speed trucks on different types of drivers in the lane-changing process. On the basis of research on low-speed trucks’ affects on driving behavior, the mechanism of low-speedtrucks’ imapct on capacity of multi-lane freeway has been studied.