An analysis of pileup accidents in highway systems

Pileup accident is a multi-vehicle collision occurring in the lane and producing by successive following vehicles. It is a special collision on highway. The probability of the occurrence of pileup accident is lower than that of the other accidents in highway systems. However, the pileup accident leads to injuries and damages which are often serious. In this paper, we analyze the occurrence of pileup accidents by considering the three types of dangerous collisions in highway systems. We evaluate those corresponding to rear-end collision, lane-changing collision, and double lane-changing collision. We simulate four road driving strategies to investigate the relationships between different vehicle collisions and pileup accidents. In accordance with the simulation and analysis, it is shown that the double lane-changing collisions result in an increase of the occurrence of pileup accidents. Additionally, we found that the probability of the occurrence of pileup accidents can be reduced when the speeds of vehicles are suitably constrained in highway systems.