Importance of Integrating Driving and Traffic Simulations: Case Study of Impact of Cell Phone Drivers on Traffic Flow

This paper argues the case for integrating driving and traffic simulators by explaining the research opportunities and illustrates this through a case study. The different nature of physical driving simulators and mathematical traffic simulations makes the integration between them difficult. Currently, it is impossible to use the output data from experiments using a driving simulator as the inputs for traffic related research without an optimization technique. The benefits of permanent integration could be profound. The design of driving simulation experiments would be more accurate, controlled, and versatile than it is now. Also, the driving environment would be more realistic, since it would come from traffic microsimulation. Traffic simulation would benefit from receiving driver behavior data directly from the driving simulator, which would improve the reliability of driver behavior theories used in the microsimulation software. The case study presents the current state of research practice of using driving simulator results in traffic related research. We relate a case-specific solution to integration, by applying a genetic algorithm optimization technique, between driver and traffic simulations to find the impact of cell phone drivers on traffic flow in congested conditions. The results show that the traffic’s level of tolerance toward cell phone drivers decreases with an increase in congestion.