Analysis of the Trajectories of Left-turning Vehicles at Signalized Intersections

Abstract

Internationally, an annual number of more than a million fatalities are caused by road traffic crashes, with particularly signalized intersections being crash prone locations within the highway system. An accumulation of conflicts between drivers is caused by the different movements (through and turning) from different directions at the intersection; hence, studying the trajectories of turning vehicles is an important step towards improving traffic safety performance of these facilities. In view of that, the current paper aims at providing further insight into the behaviour of left-turning vehicles (right-hand traffic rule) at signalized intersections in the State of Qatar. At first, a total of 44 trajectories of free-flowing vehicles were manually extracted from a recorded video for a single approach of Lekhwair signalized intersection in Doha City, State of Qatar. After that, the extracted trajectories were statistically analysed in an attempt to explore the factors affecting the path of left-turning vehicles at signalized intersections. The results suggest that the characteristics of the extracted paths are significantly related to the vehicle's entry speed, minimum speed throughout its turning manoeuvre, and the lateral distance between the exit point and the curb (i.e., targeted exit lane). Provided that the speed parameters can be fairly an indication to the driving behaviour, it can be concluded that the driver's attitude plays an important role in drawing the manoeuvre of a turning vehicle as does the pre-selection of the exit lane. Finally, the effort presented in this paper can be regarded as a way forward towards understanding the behaviour of turning vehicles at signalised intersection in the State of Qatar.