Experimental Survey and Modeling for the Driver Behavior in Vehicle Platoons

The objective of this paper is study the driver behaviors in the vehicle platoons starting from a traffic light. This study i s necessary to model the changes in the shape of the vehicle platoons at different sections along the road. It is need to understand these changes in order to define an adequate programming of the traffic light phases. The study started from a survey of traffic flows on a road section of about 650 m.: all vehicles have been followed from the start section and for each of them were recorded the transit times on next sections at known distance. The data have been analyzed with two different methods: Cyclic Flow Profiles and the Weibull distribution. The calibrated CFP, with correct parameter values, well represent the trend and the dispersion of vehicle platoons at the observed road section. The Weibull distribution, basic used to describe life-time reliability characteristics in model failure testing, can be a powerful tool also for the prediction of vehicle platoons on the road sections. Fact, starting from the flow study in a number of sections, it is possible to know the trend of distribution parameters as function of the start distance. The variation of two parameters along the road from the first section (first signal light) appears to be linear for the first parameter (position), almost linear for the second (form).