Analysis of the Overtaking Behaviour of Motor Vehicle Drivers

Abstract

Overtaking is considered to be a hazardous subtask. Possible solutions to make overtaking manoeuvres safer are overtaking lanes and intelligent systems in the vehicles that can assist drivers with the overtaking manoeuvre. To be able to design or develop these solutions, accurate overtaking manoeuvre data are required. These data are also useful for the development of traffic micro simulation models that include many assumptions to model overtaking manoeuvres. The task of this article is collecting all information about the overtaking process to prevent overtaking accidents and to reduce the collision risk of overtaking – as an important key to the reduction of head-on collisions. This study aims at acquiring qualitative empirical insights into overtaking behaviour on two-lane rural roads. To this end, an observation study with an instrumented vehicle is carried out.