Analysis of Parking Search Behavior with Video from Naturalistic Driving

The number of cars searching for parking, also known as “cruising,” is a risk factor linked to increased pollution and congestion and decreased road safety. Although the detrimental effects of cruising are known, the actual amount of cruising is unknown. A novel video data set of naturalistic driving is shown to provide reliable estimates of cruising behavior. The distribution of search start times, search distances, and search times is characterized. Cruising behavior variation between 109 different drivers is also reported on in the study, located in southeast Michigan. It was found that 30% of the drivers generated more than 70% of the meters cruised. This finding suggests that the search strategies of a few drivers disproportionately affect the many. These results facilitate the estimation of the number of vehicles searching for parking and the amount of pollution generated by cruising drivers. Researchers may also use these results to develop more realistic models of parking search and parking interventions. The results, based on video data, have implications for settings in which video data are not available. The results from this study can serve as input to a model that classifies GPS traces as cruising or not cruising.