In the United States, intersections are among the most frequent locations for crashes. One of the major problems at signalized intersection is the dilemma zone, which is caused by false driver behavior during the yellow interval. This research evaluated driver behavior during the yellow interval at signalized intersections and compared different dilemma zone countermeasures. The study was conducted through four stages. First, the driver behavior during the yellow interval were collected and analyzed. Eight variables, which are related to risky situations, are considered. The impact factors of drivers' stop/go decisions and the presence of the red-light running (RLR) violations were also analyzed. Second, based on the field data, a logistic model, which is a function of speed, distance to the stop line and the lead/follow position of the vehicle, was developed to predict drivers' stop/go decisions. Meanwhile, Cellular Automata (CA) models for the movement at the signalized intersection were developed. In this study, four different simulation scenarios were established, including the typical intersection signal, signal with flashing green phases, the intersection with pavement marking upstream of the approach, and the intersection with a new countermeasure: adding an auxiliary flashing indication next to the pavement marking. When vehicles are approaching the intersection with a speed lower than the speed limit of the intersection approach, the auxiliary flashing yellow indication will begin flashing before the yellow phase. If the vehicle that has not passed the pavement marking before the onset of the auxiliary flashing yellow indication and can see the flashing indication, the driver should choose to stop during the yellow interval. Otherwise, the driver should choose to go at the yellow duration. The CA model was employed to simulate the traffic flow, and the logistic model was applied as the stop/go decision rule. Dilemma situations that lead to rear-end crash risks and potential RLR risks were used to evaluate the different scenarios. According to the simulation results, the mean and standard deviation of the speed of the traffic flow play a significant role in rear-end crash risk situations, where a lower speed and standard deviation could lead to less rear-end risk situations at the same intersection. High difference in speed are more prone to cause rear-end crashes. With Respect to the RLR violations, the RLR risk analysis showed that the mean speed of the leading vehicle has important influence on the RLR risk in the typical intersection simulation scenarios as well as intersections with the flashing green phases' simulation scenario. Moreover, the findings indicated that the flashing green could not effectively reduce the risk probabilities. The pavement marking countermeasure had positive effects on reducing the risk probabilities if a platoon's mean speed was not under the speed used for designing the pavement marking. Otherwise, the risk probabilities for the intersection would not be reduced because of the increase in the RLR rate. The simulation results showed that the scenario with the pavement marking and an auxiliary indication countermeasure, which adds a flashing indication next to the pavement marking, had less risky situations than the other scenarios with the same speed distribution. These findings suggested the effectiveness of the pavement marking and an auxiliary indication countermeasure to reduce both rear-end collisions and RLR violations than other countermeasures.

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Continuous transportation demand growth in recent years has led to many traffic issues in urban areas. Among the most challenging ones are traffic congestion and the associated vehicular emissions. Efficient design of traffic signal control systems can be a promising approach to address these problems. This research develops a real-time signal control system, which optimizes signal timings at an under-saturated isolated intersection by minimizing total vehicular emissions. A combination of previously introduced analytical models based on traffic flow theory has been used. These models are able to estimate time spent per driving mode (i.e., time spent accelerating, decelerating, cruising, and idling) as a function of demand, vehicle arrival times, saturation flow, and signal control parameters. Information on vehicle activity is used along with the Vehicle Specific Power (VSP) model, which estimates emission rates per time spent in each operating mode to obtain total emissions per cycle. For the evaluation of the proposed method, data from two real-world intersections of Mesogion and Katechaki Avenues located in Athens, Greece and University and San Pablo Avenues, in Berkeley, CA has been used. The evaluation has been performed through both deterministic (i.e. under the assumption of perfect information for all inputs) and stochastic (i.e. without having perfect information for some inputs) arrival tests. The results of evaluation tests have shown that the proposed emission-based signal control system reduces emissions compared to traditional vehicle-based signal control system in most cases.

Cooperative driving in a connected vehicle (CV) environment has received increasing attention over the years due to its ability to enhance driving safety and efficiency. Despite many efforts that have been made in this field, the role of human drivers and pedestrians is frequently omitted. It is important to consider them to develop cooperative driving algorithms that are intelligent and robust to incorporate any uncertainty brought by humans. In this dissertation, a framework of a multi-driver in-the-loop driving simulator and a pedestrian in-the-loop digital twin system is introduced. Three important topics in cooperative driving were investigated using the developed framework: the effects of human-machine interface (HMI) design for cooperative driving, vehicle-pedestrian interaction under occlusion scenarios, and multi-vehicle decision-making at weaving segments. In the first topic, three HMIs were designed for collaborative speed adaptation following the skills, rules, and knowledge (SRK) taxonomy. The HMI designs were tested using a multi-driver simulator, and the results showed that the graphic-based HMI improved cooperative driving performance and was preferred by the participants. In the second task, a Digital Twin framework for CV and pedestrian in-the-loop simulation was proposed based on Carla-Sumo Co-simulation and Cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE). The effects of Vehicle-Pedestrian (V2P) warning systems under occlusion scenarios were investigated for different connectivity and vehicle automation levels. In the third task, an edge-enhanced graph attention deep reinforcement learning algorithm was developed to aid autonomous vehicles in diverging at weaving segments. The results showed that the proposed algorithms outperformed existing models and performed well in real-world driving scenarios. The dissertation provides insights into developing safe and efficient cooperative driving algorithms and applying advanced simulation technologies to human-in-the-loop cooperative driving testing.

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