Chiang Mai Journal of Science

Overtaking is considered as one of the most complex and dangerous driving behavior. Researchers worldwide have developed various models and conducted experiments to study the characteristics of overtaking. In this paper, we proposed a new two-lane two-way cellular automaton traffic flow model which characterizes the overtaking process and considers the deceleration behavior of opposite vehicles and unsuccessful overtaking operation. We further used this model to conduct simulation experiments and examined the influence of certain parameters on overtaking as well as on the traffic flow. The major results obtained from this study are as follows. (1) Overtaking can aggravate the instability of traffic flow, leading to decreases in average flow rates. (2) As the truck penetration rate rises, both the overtaking rates as well as unsuccessful overtaking rates increase first and then decrease. (3) A large value of the deceleration probability of opposite vehicles promotes overtaking operations and increases the overtaking rates, but it exhibits different influencing trends in terms of unsuccessful overtaking rates. (4) A small value of safe returnable distance leads to an increase in average travel time, and both the overtaking duration as well as safe returnable distance are negatively correlated with the overtaking rates. (5) Moreover, the longer overtaking duration encourages overtaking vehicles to abort overtaking, while the longer safe returnable distance reduces the unsuccessful overtaking rates.