Investigating Drivers’ Behaviour During Diverging Maneuvers Using an Instrumented Vehicle

Deceleration lanes are designed to improve traffic operations of interchanges to ensure safety conditions during diverging maneuvers. Nevertheless, highway diverge areas are often characterized by high crash rates and poor operations, demonstrating that their efficiency and safety need further research. The main objective of this study is to analyze driving performance on deceleration lanes; therefore, two deceleration lanes of an existing Italian highway have been studied, collecting data from drivers who drove an instrumented vehicle along a selected route. The results demonstrated a substantial difference between drivers’ maneuvers from those adopted by most guidelines and confirmed findings of previous research developed with different modes. Such driving performance caused significant interference with through traffic that, in turn, caused subsequent issues in operating and traffic safety conditions. The results of this study are quite promising, especially since they corroborate findings of previous studies developed by the same authors as part of a wider, long-term research.