Over-speeding is a major cause of traffic accidents. Proper speed limit could provide guidance for drivers and help in improving traffic safety. This paper examined driving behaviors under different speed limit and proposed a speed limit optimizing methodology. First, vehicles steering wheel angles, acceleration, and the distance between the specified vehicle's center of gravity and centerline of the lane were compared using multiple independent samples nonparametric tests to study the influence of different speed limits. Then the TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) and PCA (Principal Component Analysis) methods were used to determine the optimal speed limit. These methods were applied in the driving simulator and the results proved that these methods were effective. The results also suggested that speed limit had a significant influence on the lane changing and overtaking driving behavior. Therefore, these methods could be applied in real traffic management to create safe and efficient driving environment.

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