Gaze Behaviour of Drivers While Lane Changing at Queuing on Toll Plazas

Studying driver behaviour and its interaction with various elements of the road and road environment is one of the research areas with the highest potential to reduce crash probabilities, specifically on Indian roads with mixed traffic conditions. Speed is cited as the most influential reason for the accidents and fatalities caused on Highways. However, it is often overlooked that a considerable number of casualties often happen during lane changing, which is not often reported as lane changing is a very subjective event and is tough to comprehend due to various reasons affecting and inflicting the lane changes. Lane Changes are not only the significant causes of Side collisions; a considerable number of rear-end and front-end collisions are owed to sudden lane change manoeuvres. The interest in the Lane change behaviour of a driver is not new. It is widely associated with aberrant driving behaviour in the various pieces of research carried out in the field. Still, it cannot address the actual causes of this behaviour, instead of only the consequences like crash probability, speed, density, travel time and delay and other such factors are correlated with the lane change behaviour. The sudden lane change manoeuvres are often attributed to similar prior visual behaviour, which can also be well detected on time and alarmed if efficient driving monitoring and training module is being developed. This study evaluates the lane change behaviour at toll plazas attributed to the visual behaviour of the driver. The driver often looks at various elements before and after deciding the service lane he wants to pass through on the toll plaza. Previous studies have only worked towards the factors like position and number of HCVs in lanes, serviceability of booths and dwell time. However, the Gaze Behaviour of driver is one of the vital parameters which shows how often the driver is looking into the potential lane and target lanes and how sure or unsure he is of his lane change manoeuvres.