Passing maneuvers on rural two-lane highways have a significant effect oncapacity, level of service and safety. This paper presents an analysis ofdrivers' passing decisions on two-lane rural highways using an interactive driving simulator. The simulator enables the collection of vehicle speeds and positions for different road and traffic scenarios. In addition to the driver simulator, participants responded to a questionnaire which collected information about their socio-demographic and driving styles characteristics. The composed dataset was analyzed and processed to develop a model that predicts the risk associated with the passing behavior. The explanatory variables tested represent road geometry, traffic conditions and drivers' characteristics. Special attention with respect to the model structure was required, to avoid bias related to non-passing cases. It was found that while the traffic related variables had the most important effect on the risk of a collision, factors related to the geometric design and the driver characteristics also had a significant contribution.
Abstract