Applying Markov decision process to understand driving decisions using basic safety messages data

While a number of studies have investigated driving behaviors, detailed microscopic driving data has only recently become available for analysis. Through Basic Safety Message (BSM) data from the Michigan Safety Pilot Program, this study applies a Markov Decision Process (MDP) framework to understand driving behavior in terms of acceleration, deceleration and maintaining speed decisions. Personally Revealed Choices (PRC) that maximize the expected sum of rewards for individual drivers are obtained by analyzing detailed data from 120 trips and the application of MDP. Specifically, this paper defines states based on the number of objects around the host vehicle and the distance to the front object. Given the states, individual drivers’ reward functions are estimated using the multinomial logit model and used in the MDP framework. Optimal policies (i.e. PRC) are obtained through a value iteration algorithm. The results show that as the number of objects increases around a host vehicle, the driver prefer to accelerate in order to escape the crowdedness around them. In addition, when trips are segmented based on the level of crowdedness, increased levels of trip crowdedness results in a fewer number of drivers accelerating because the traffic conditions constrain them to maintaining constant speed or deceleration. One potential application of this study is to generate short-term predictive driver decision information through historical driving performance, which can be used to warn a host vehicle driver when the person substantially deviates from their own historical PRC. This information could also be disseminated to surrounding vehicles as well, enabling them to foresee the states and actions of other drivers and potentially avoid collisions.