Drivers' right-angle collision avoidance behaviors at non-signalized intersection — A driving simulator based study

Safety at non-signalized intersections is of significant importance to transportation safety study due to the large number of such intersections in transportation network and the complexity of traffic movements at these locations also leads to large numbers of conflicts. This study designed a collision scenario by using driving simulator to investigate the drivers' behavior performance at non-signalized intersection when encountered with a potential right-angle collision and evaluate the behavior mechanism in the collision avoidance process. Experiment results indicated most drivers decelerated to avoid the collision while others accelerated. The drivers' lane position preference was changed from right to left side of the lane center after the conflict. The drivers' braking response time not only influenced the key variables in the collision avoidance significantly, such as the average deceleration and the position after deceleration, but also had a significant effect on the collision avoidance result, which was indicated by the minimum distance between the simulator and the conflict vehicle. Besides, slight gender difference was found in the experiment. Female drivers had larger lane position change than male drivers in the collision avoidance and they were also closer to the conflict vehicle than male drivers after the collision avoidance.