Car-following behavior in traffic having mixed vehicle-types

Car-following models replicate the behavior of a driver following another vehicle and are widely used in the development of traffic simulation tools. In this study, the performance of major car-following models is evaluated using microscopic vehicle trajectory when the lead and the following vehicle-types are different. Vehicles equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers were used to collect car-following data from two urban arterials of India. Analysis of car-following data indicates the existence of distinct behavior for each vehicle-type combination. Among the vehicle-type combinations studied, the following behavior of small sized vehicles is easily reproduced by the models, compared to large vehicle-types. Similarly, among the models, the Gipps and Krauss models are able to predict following behavior better than the rest followed by the MITSIM model.