A new psychological methodology for modeling real-time car following maneuvers

In this paper a new structure of car following is proposed, and the psychological point of view is investigated in it. In general, most car following models have been investigated from the physical point of view, but in this paper, it is shown that in order to find a more realistic model for car following, not only does the physical point of view have to be considered, but also this model has to be investigated from psychological and control-engineering points of views too. In the rest of the paper, the psychological point of view in the proposed structure for the car following model is investigated in detail. In order to do this, some scenarios are designed with the aim of investigating drivers’ behavior; then, these scenarios are applied to 65 different drivers using different simulators. By analyzing the data gathered from the scenarios, the related parameters of the proposed model are estimated, and the distributions of the values of the parameters are shown. In the end, some suggestions for investigating the control-engineering point of view in the proposed car following structure in this study are presented. The results of this research are of great importance in applying car following models in different driving simulators and also in every research where there is a need for a more realistic car following model.