Life in the fast lane: Duration-based investigation of driver behavior differences across freeway lanes

The objective of this paper is to explore driver behavior in separate lane groups from a duration perspective by using hazard-based models. Driving is a continuous story divided into different experienced episodes. Each episode is terminated probabilistically on the basis of the surrounding traffic conditions as well as the drivers' characteristics. This termination reflects mainly lane-changing behaviors. By means of the next generation simulation (NGSIM) trajectory data, an analysis is performed of the time durations until lane-changing maneuvers are executed. The distributions of such durations are found to be lane specific in cases in which the leftmost lanes show higher duration mean than the rightmost lanes. This indicates that drivers wait longer before deciding to change lanes in the leftmost lanes. In the middle lanes a bipeak distribution constitutes a transition between satisfaction in traveling in the fast lanes (left) versus impatience while traveling in the slower lanes (right).