A maneuver indicator and ensemble learning-based risky driver recognition approach for highway merging areas

Abstract

Due to the complex traffic characteristics in highway merging areas, drivers tend to exhibit high-risk driving behaviors. To address the characteristics of driving behavior in highway merging areas, we have developed a real-time identification model for risky drivers by combining a driver risk level labeling method with load balancing-ensemble learning (LB-EL). In this paper, we explore four types of maneuver indicator indexes (MIIs)—acute direction, stomp pedal, dangerous following, and dangerous lane changing—that can describe the negative behaviors of both individual vehicles and vehicle platoons in highway merging areas. To quantize the label driver risk level, we use the interquartile range (IQR) method and Criteria Importance Though Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC), while we evaluate the reliability of the MII using spatial analysis. Furthermore, we balance the dataset using three load balancing (LB) algorithms and create nine ensemble strategies by pairing adaptive boosting (AdaBoost), extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), and light gradient boosting machine (LGBM) with the three LB algorithms. Finally, we validate the proposed model using trajectory data extracted from UAV videos. The results indicate that the distribution laws of risky driving behaviors in the acute direction and stomp pedal show a high degree of similarity and good matching with the distribution laws of traffic conflict points in existing research. Moreover, the SMOTE-LGBM ensemble model achieves the best performance, reaching an accuracy rate of 93.4% and a recall rate of 92.1%, which demonstrates the validity of our proposed model. This model can be widely applied to recognize risky drivers in video-based surveillance systems.