English

How aggressive a driver is? - A quantitative analysis

Physics and Society 2018-05-01 v1

Abstract

Consider a bottleneck in a road through which only one car can pass through. Suppose that at a time the car passing will have the most aggressive driver in queue and that the aggressiveness of an individual is measured by an attribute ANτσA \equiv N \tau^{\sigma} where the quantity NN varies randomly from person to person in the range 0 to 1, τ\tau is the time for which the driver is waiting in the bottleneck and the parameter σ\sigma is the same for all individuals. Thus, we assume that the aggressiveness depends on the nature of the individual and increases with waiting time in a traffic jam. In support of the algebraic form of AA, we show (numerically and analytically) that our hypothesis implies that the probability of waiting for a time τ\tau will be P(τ)ταP(\tau) \propto \tau^{\alpha} with the value of α\alpha fixed by σ\sigma. Empirical studies confirm such variation in P(τ)P(\tau) with an exponent of 3.0 to 3.5 in two different cities of India and 1.5 for a traffic intersection in Germany. There is a possibility that the parameter σ\sigma (and hence α\alpha) is characteristic of a geographical region.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1804.10965,
  title  = {How aggressive a driver is? - A quantitative analysis},
  author = {Subinay Dasgupta and Sitabhra Sinha},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.10965},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

4 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:39:24.024Z