# Learning to Drive by Imitating Surrounding Vehicles

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.05997 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05997/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Imitation and offline RL for driving, one of 13 directions in Offline RL and imitation learning from data.
- Builds on 26 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Mar 2025.

## Placed in

- Offline RL and imitation learning from data / [Imitation and offline RL for driving](https://mlsanity.com/offlinerl/imitation-and-offline-rl-for-driving/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [Lift, Splat, Shoot: Encoding Images From Arbitrary Camera Rigs by Implicitly Unprojecting to 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05711/) (2020)
- [Argoverse: 3D Tracking and Forecasting with Rich Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02620/) (2019)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.00444/) (2020)
- [NuPlan: A closed-loop ML-based planning benchmark for autonomous vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11810/) (2021)
- [ChauffeurNet: Learning to Drive by Imitating the Best and Synthesizing the Worst](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03079/) (2018)
- [NAVSIM: Data-Driven Non-Reactive Autonomous Vehicle Simulation and Benchmarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15349/) (2024)
- [Causal Confusion in Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11979/) (2019)
- [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)
- [Parting with Misconceptions about Learning-based Vehicle Motion Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07962/) (2023)
- [INTERACTION Dataset: An INTERnational, Adversarial and Cooperative moTION Dataset in Interactive Driving Scenarios with Semantic Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03088/) (2019)
- [Waymax: An Accelerated, Data-Driven Simulator for Large-Scale Autonomous Driving Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08710/) (2023)
- [GameFormer: Game-theoretic Modeling and Learning of Transformer-based Interactive Prediction and Planning for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05760/) (2023)
- [Diffusion-Based Planning for Autonomous Driving with Flexible Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.15564/) (2025)
- [Learning from All Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11934/) (2022)
- [Imitation Is Not Enough: Robustifying Imitation with Reinforcement Learning for Challenging Driving Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11419/) (2022)
- [Towards learning-based planning:The nuPlan benchmark for real-world autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04133/) (2024)
- [Hidden Biases of End-to-End Driving Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07957/) (2023)
- [PLUTO: Pushing the Limit of Imitation Learning-based Planning for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14327/) (2024)
- [Improving Generalization in Reinforcement Learning with Mixture Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.10814/) (2020)
- [Fighting Copycat Agents in Behavioral Cloning from Observation Histories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.14876/) (2020)
- [LLM-Assist: Enhancing Closed-Loop Planning with Language-Based Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00125/) (2023)
- [Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.09675/) (2024)
- [Learning by Watching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05966/) (2021)
- [Embedding Synthetic Off-Policy Experience for Autonomous Driving via Zero-Shot Curricula](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.01375/) (2022)
- [LASIL: Learner-Aware Supervised Imitation Learning For Long-term Microscopic Traffic Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17601/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Imitation learning is a promising approach for training autonomous vehicles (AV) to navigate complex traffic environments by mimicking expert driver behaviors. While existing imitation learning frameworks focus on leveraging expert demonstrations, they often overlook the potential of additional complex driving data from surrounding traffic participants. In this paper, we study a data augmentation strategy that leverages the observed trajectories of nearby vehicles, captured by the AV's sensors, as additional demonstrations. We introduce a simple vehicle-selection sampling and filtering strategy that prioritizes informative and diverse driving behaviors, contributing to a richer dataset for training. We evaluate this idea with a representative learning-based planner on a large real-world dataset and demonstrate improved performance in complex driving scenarios. Specifically, the approach reduces collision rates and improves safety metrics compared to the baseline. Notably, even when using only 10 percent of the original dataset, the method matches or exceeds the performance of the full dataset. Through ablations, we analyze selection criteria and show that naive random selection can degrade performance. Our findings highlight the value of leveraging diverse real-world trajectory data in imitation learning and provide insights into data augmentation strategies for autonomous driving.