Characterizing lane change dynamics in vehicular traffic through video analysis

Abstract

Simulations and anecdotal reports indicate that wanton lane changing, which forces other drivers to slow down to compensate for the lane changing vehicle, is a factor in slow-moving traffic. The effect is similar to the "faster is slower" effect observed in crowd evacuation: In the individual’s rush to move forward faster, the flow of the whole population suffers. We present a video processing method to characterize the lane change probability of vehicles on a road using a feature tracking method.