A Method and System for Modeling Autonomous Vehicle Behavior. The system and method makes it feasible to develop an autonomous vehicle control system for complex vehicles, such as for cargo trucks and other large payload vehicles. The method and system commences by first obtaining 3-dimensional data for one or more sections of roadway. Once the 3-dimensional roadway data is obtained, that data is used to run computer simulations of a computer model of a specific vehicle being controlled by a generic vehicle control algorithm or system. The generic vehicle control algorithm is optimized by running the simulations utilizing the 3-dimensional roadway data until an acceptable performance result is achieved. Once an acceptable simulation is executed using the generic vehicle control algorithm, the control algorithm/system is used to run one or more real-world driving tests on the roadway for which the 3-dimensional data was obtained. Finally, the computer model for the vehicle is modified, if necessary (without modifying the control algorithm), until the real-world driving performance is acceptable.