Driver deviations from planned routes during navigation threaten road safety and reduce traffic efficiency, with F‐shaped intersections emerging as a high‐risk scenario. This study investigates deviation causes using real‐world navigation operation data and hourly aggregated observations. A generalized structural equation model (SEM) with a zero‐inflated negative binomial link is applied to disentangle direct effects of external conditions and indirect effects mediated by traffic flow and congestion. Key findings include the following: exit/entrance roads ( β = 0.135, p < 0.001) and road type ( β = 0.100, p < 0.001) exert the strongest direct effects on deviations, while traffic congestion mediates 12% of the indirect effect of weather conditions on deviations. An actionable design takeaway is that extending advance signage on high‐risk segments reduces deviations by 18% −14%, −22% at median traffic flow, providing targeted technical support for F‐shaped intersection optimization to improve road safety and traffic efficiency.
Xu et al. (Thu,) studied this question.