Homa Fartash - PhD Student at Florida International University, Miami. FL
Mohammad Lavasani - PhD Student at Florida International University, Miami. FL

A considerable ratio of all accidents in Europe and U.S. are read-end accidents.These are normally as a result of either heading vehicle stops suddenly due to anunprecedented happening or leading vehicle aggressive driving. In this paper,two topics are studied. An accident zone is modeled using a driving simulator,and then participants were asked to drive the car. Before drivers approach toaccident zone, in three difference scenarios either a truck enters the freeway andblinds the driver view, or emergency vehicles are stopped at the right shoulder inaccident zone or both of these two are happened together. The speed andacceleration rate of all drivers are used to find driving behavior close to accidentarea with and without emergency vehicles existence. When truck exists in thescenario, totally three participants couldn’t finish their scenario because ofaccident showing more aggressiveness driving when heavy vehicles are existing.When there was no emergency car in accident area drivers approached theaccident area with higher speed in compare with the situation in whichemergency vehicles were existed. Truck has affected driver behavior, by the waywhen emergency cars were presented the effect of truck was less in compare withthe scenario without emergency cars.

Accident, Car following, Truck, Emergency vehicle, Driving behavior