Modelling of driver lane choice behaviour at multilane roads

Road surface deteriorations (deformations) are commonly seen in developing countries like Turkey. Especially various road surface deformations generally occur in urban and interurban roads due to infrastructure and superstructure deficiencies and excessive heavy vehicle loads. These kinds of deformations are one of the main reasons of high traffic accident rate in Turkey. On the other hand, deformations necessitate reconstruction or maintenance before the scheduled operational plan. Consequently it may result overrun in operation cost.In this study, the lateral positions and longitudinal movements of vehicles on lanes are investigated in current traffic flow. Also deformation effects on drivers? tendencies of lane selection and on the movement of current traffic flow are tried to be determined. A new critical speed calculation method is suggested to predict backward shock waves caused by deformed road sections. According to obtained results; it is seen that the degree of deformations and driver characteristics are one of the most important parameters for the movement of vehicles. In addition, road capacity values fluctuate by these sections and noticeable decrease in capacity values that are generally assigned depend on depth and height of deformations.