# LC-LLM: Explainable Lane-Change Intention and Trajectory Predictions with Large Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.18344 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18344/

## Key facts

- Cited by 35 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 39 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Mar 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11916/) (2022)
- [Least-to-Most Prompting Enables Complex Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10625/) (2022)
- [SparseGPT: Massive Language Models Can Be Accurately Pruned in One-Shot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00774/) (2023)
- [Large Scale Interactive Motion Forecasting for Autonomous Driving : The Waymo Open Motion Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10133/) (2021)
- [VectorNet: Encoding HD Maps and Agent Dynamics from Vectorized Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.04259/) (2020)
- [Pre-trained Models for Natural Language Processing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08271/) (2020)
- [DriveGPT4: Interpretable End-to-end Autonomous Driving via Large Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01412/) (2023)
- [MultiPath: Multiple Probabilistic Anchor Trajectory Hypotheses for Behavior Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.05449/) (2019)
- [Learning Lane Graph Representations for Motion Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.13732/) (2020)
- [Explain Yourself! Leveraging Language Models for Commonsense Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02361/) (2019)
- [TNT: Target-driveN Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08294/) (2020)
- [GPT-Driver: Learning to Drive with GPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01415/) (2023)
- [Multimodal Trajectory Predictions for Autonomous Driving using Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.10732/) (2018)
- [The highD Dataset: A Drone Dataset of Naturalistic Vehicle Trajectories on German Highways for Validation of Highly Automated Driving Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.05642/) (2018)
- [Motion Transformer with Global Intention Localization and Local Movement Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.13508/) (2022)
- [Deja Vu: Contextual Sparsity for Efficient LLMs at Inference Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17157/) (2023)
- [Driving with LLMs: Fusing Object-Level Vector Modality for Explainable Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01957/) (2023)
- [MotionLM: Multi-Agent Motion Forecasting as Language Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16534/) (2023)
- [LLM4Drive: A Survey of Large Language Models for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01043/) (2023)
- [Rules of the Road: Predicting Driving Behavior with a Convolutional Model of Semantic Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08945/) (2019)
- [Language Prompt for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.04379/) (2023)
- [Can Large Language Models Explain Themselves? A Study of LLM-Generated Self-Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11207/) (2023)
- [An LSTM Network for Highway Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07962/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Exploring the Roles of Large Language Models in Reshaping Transportation Systems: A Survey, Framework, and Roadmap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21411/) (2025)
- [Integrating LLMs with ITS: Recent Advances, Potentials, Challenges, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.04437/) (2025)
- [Multi-Agent Autonomous Driving Systems with Large Language Models: A Survey of Recent Advances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16804/) (2025)
- [Large Language Models for Mobility Analysis in Transportation Systems: A Survey on Forecasting Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.02357/) (2024)
- [AD-H: Language-guided Autonomous Driving with Hierarchical Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.03474/) (2024)
- [V2X-LLM: Enhancing V2X Integration and Understanding in Connected Vehicle Corridors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02239/) (2025)
- [LD-Scene: LLM-Guided Diffusion for Controllable Generation of Adversarial Safety-Critical Driving Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11247/) (2025)
- [GenFollower: Enhancing Car-Following Prediction with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05611/) (2024)
- [Generative AI in Transportation Planning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07158/) (2025)
- [Large Language Models and Their Applications in Roadway Safety and Mobility Enhancement: A Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06301/) (2025)
- [XLM for Autonomous Driving Systems: A Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.10484/) (2024)
- [PRIMEDrive-CoT: A Precognitive Chain-of-Thought Framework for Uncertainty-Aware Object Interaction in Driving Scene Scenario](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.05908/) (2025)
- [Large Foundation Models for Trajectory Prediction in Autonomous Driving: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.10570/) (2025)
- [Explainable Lane Change Prediction for Near-Crash Scenarios Using Knowledge Graph Embeddings and Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.11560/) (2025)
- [SD++: Enhancing Standard Definition Maps by Incorporating Road Knowledge using LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02773/) (2025)
- [LIFT: Interpretable truck driving risk prediction with literature-informed fine-tuned LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.22333/) (2025)
- [MILD: Mediator Agent System with Bidirectional Perception and Multi-Layered Alignment for Human-Vehicle Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01507/) (2026)
- [Unlock the Power of Unlabeled Data in Language Driving Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10586/) (2025)
- [A Knowledge-Informed Deep Learning Paradigm for Generalizable and Stability-Optimized Car-Following Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14241/) (2025)
- [sam-llm: interpretable lane change trajectoryprediction via parametric finetuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.03462/) (2025)
- [Design Insights and Comparative Evaluation of a Hardware-Based Cooperative Perception Architecture for Lane Change Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.20218/) (2025)
- [Addressing Corner Cases in Autonomous Driving: A World Model-based Approach with Mixture of Experts and LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.21867/) (2025)
- [SVBRD-LLM: Self-Verifying Behavioral Rule Discovery for Autonomous Vehicle Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14977/) (2025)
- [ShipTraj-R1: Reinforcing Ship Trajectory Prediction in Large Language Models via Group Relative Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02939/) (2026)
- [C-TRAIL: A Commonsense World Framework for Trajectory Planning in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.29908/) (2026)
- [C2INet: Realizing Incremental Trajectory Prediction with Prior-Aware Continual Causal Intervention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.12313/) (2024)
- [Driving Through Uncertainty: Risk-Averse Control with LLM Commonsense for Autonomous Driving under Perception Deficits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07020/) (2025)
- [Collaborative-Distilled Diffusion Models (CDDM) for Accelerated and Lightweight Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.00627/) (2025)
- [Strategic Fusion of Vision Language Models: Shapley-Credited Context-Aware Dawid-Skene for Multi-Label Tasks in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.01126/) (2025)
- [Robustness of LLM-enabled vehicle trajectory prediction under data security threats](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.13753/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

To ensure safe driving in dynamic environments, autonomous vehicles should possess the capability to accurately predict lane change intentions of surrounding vehicles in advance and forecast their future trajectories. Existing motion prediction approaches have ample room for improvement, particularly in terms of long-term prediction accuracy and interpretability. In this paper, we address these challenges by proposing LC-LLM, an explainable lane change prediction model that leverages the strong reasoning capabilities and self-explanation abilities of Large Language Models (LLMs). Essentially, we reformulate the lane change prediction task as a language modeling problem, processing heterogeneous driving scenario information as natural language prompts for LLMs and employing supervised fine-tuning to tailor LLMs specifically for lane change prediction task. Additionally, we finetune the Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning to improve prediction transparency and reliability, and include explanatory requirements in the prompts during inference stage. Therefore, our LC-LLM model not only predicts lane change intentions and trajectories but also provides CoT reasoning and explanations for its predictions, enhancing its interpretability. Extensive experiments based on the large-scale highD dataset demonstrate the superior performance and interpretability of our LC-LLM in lane change prediction task. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to utilize LLMs for predicting lane change behavior. Our study shows that LLMs can effectively encode comprehensive interaction information for driving behavior understanding.