Trade-off between jerk and time headway as an indicator of driving style

Teemu H. Itkonen*, Jami Pekkanen, Otto Lappi, Iisakki Kosonen, Tapio Luttinen, Heikki Summala

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

24 Citations (Scopus)
224 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Variation in longitudinal control in driving has been discussed in both traffic psychology and transportation engineering. Traffic psychologists have concerned themselves with “driving style”, a habitual form of behavior marked by it’s stability, and its basis in psychological traits. Those working in traffic microsimulation have searched for quantitative ways to represent different driver-car systems in car following models. There has been unfortunately little overlap or theoretical consistency between these literatures. Here, we investigated relationships between directly observable measures (time headway, acceleration and jerk) in a simulated driving task where the driving context, vehicle and environment were controlled. We found individual differences in the way a trade-off was made between close but jerky vs. far and smooth following behavior. We call these “intensive” and “calm” driving, and suggest this trade-off can serve as an indicator of a possible latent factor underlying driving style. We posit that pursuing such latent factors for driving style may have implications for modelling driver heterogeneity across various domains in traffic simulation.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0185856
JournalPloS one
Volume12
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Oct 2017
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

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