User:Narayanaraju 10/sandbox

= Mixed Traffic Conditions = Driving behavior on road space is one of the complex phenomena in traffic engineering, with involvement in human behavior and associated stochastic nature. To analyze this, numerous research studies have been carried in the past to understand driving behavior and to assess its nature concerning the change in surrounding conditions. On these lines, researchers discretized the driving phenomenon into two parts as following and lane-changing behavior for mid-block road sections. Further, this led to the development of different car-following and lane-changing models. On these lines, based on the developed models, researchers assessed traffic characteristics over the road sections. Given this, at the same time modeling car-following and lane-changing models requires a huge amount of data to understand driving retorting nature of the vehicles over the traffic stream.

Further, with technological advancements, researchers focused on integrating driving behavior models and other road geometric characteristics which led to the development of microscopic traffic simulation tools. Based on this, researchers were able to perform various field related experiments that are used to carry the analysis. This gave researchers enough opportunities in testing their driving behavior frameworks. Further, researchers, sensed the importance of driving behavior in assessing traffic safety, have developed different proactive safety measures in assessing safety. At the same time, most of the research studies are related to homogeneous traffic conditions. On the other hand, in the case of countries like India, traffic on the road section is of mixed (non-homogeneous) nature and includes numerous vehicle categories. As a result, vehicles tend to possess weak lane discipline which can result in complex interactions among them. Given this, driving behavior studies are very limited in this direction due to the complexity involved which is a research gap in this direction. On these lines, the present study attempts to understand mixed traffic behavior over the road space. Further, the results from the study can help researchers in understanding mixed traffic conditions, in framing future concepts. At the same time, the insights of the work can assist engineers and practitioners in this direction.