Investigating the long- and short-term driving characteristics and incorporating them into car-following models

•The LSTD model is proposed to describe long-and short-term driving characteristics.•The long-term characteristics are classified into three types via cluster analysis.•The short-term characteristics are identified and divided into two types.•The six types of LSTD characteristics are incorporated into IDM and Gipps’ model.•Significant improvement is demonstrated by incorporating LSTD into CF models.