From Behavioral Psychology to Acceleration Modeling: Calibration, Validation, and Exploration of Drivers Cognitive and Safety Parameters in a Risk-Taking Environment

We investigate a utility-based approach for driver car-following behavioral modeling while analyzing different aspects of the model characteristics especially in terms of capturing different fundamental diagram regions and safety proxy indices. The adopted model came from an elementary thought where drivers associate subjective utilities for accelerations (i.e. gain in travel times) and subjective dis-utilities for decelerations (i.e. loss in travel time) with a perceived probability of being involved in rear-end collision crashes. Following the testing of the model general structure, the authors translate the corresponding behavioral psychology theory - prospect theory - into an efficientmicroscopic traffic modeling with more elaborate stochastic characteristics considered in a risk-taking environment. The formulated model offers a better understanding of drivers behavior, particularly under extreme/incident conditions.