Effect of Lateral Shift of a Vehicle on Following Vehicles

Developing countries generally have mixed traffic conditions with non-lane discipline, which causes lateral interaction of multiple vehicles within a single lane. The lateral movement of vehicles affects traffic flow and few studies have been done on vehicle lateral behavior in mixed traffic conditions. Only a small portion of these studies have examined how the lateral movement of a vehicle affects the vehicle that follows it. This research aims to understand and analyze the behavior of the following vehicles due to the lateral shift of their leader vehicles. Trajectory data of vehicles procured from an urban arterial road in Guwahati was used for the study. Two cases of a lateral shift are considered and studied separately. Additionally, a model is developed to forecast how lateral shifts would affect the driving behavior of following vehicles in terms of the top speed attained by those vehicles. Different explanatory variables such as the space gap between vehicles and the speed of vehicles are considered. Finally, it is found that a vehicle's lateral shift has a considerable impact on its following vehicle.