Improving Road Transport Models Incorporating Cooperative Priority

Recent years have seen a series of increasingly detailed simulation models developed to aid in the design of new road infrastructure. In general, these models usually assume that all drivers follow the rules of the road unless forced to do otherwise. It has become apparent however that this means such models miss a form of driving behaviour known as cooperative priority, where drivers for example choose to allow another vehicle/pedestrian to move first when the rules say they would have to wait, to change lane to allow another vehicle to merge from a side road when the rules do not recommend this, or to leave a gap in a stationary queue of traffic simply for the benefit of others.

Without correct representation of such behaviour in the transport models, it is likely that queues and delays at junctions are being significantly overestimated, leading to incorrect data being used in benefit-cost analyses and potentially poor decisions over the implementation of junction improvement schemes. This project will therefore investigate the prevalence of such cooperative behaviour and develop ways in which to incorporate it into existing modelling frameworks.