Compared with pavement structures of ordinary road sections, pavement structures in the intersection are exposed to more complex traffic characteristics which may exacerbates pavement distresses such as fatigue-cracking, shoving, shear deformation and rutting. Based on a field survey about traffic characteristics in the intersection conducted in Shanghai China, a three dimensional dynamic finite-element model was developed for evaluating the mechanistic responses in the pavement structures under different traffic characteristics, namely uniform speed, acceleration and deceleration. The results from this study indicated that : (1) traffic characteristics have significant effects on the distributions of the maximum principal strain (MPS) and the maximum shear stress (MSS) at the pavement surface; (2) vehicle acceleration or deceleration substantially impact the MPS and MSS at pavement surface and could increase the magnitude of them by 20 percent to 260 percent; (3) in the vertical direction, with the increase of vehicle deceleration rate, the location of the MPS peak value and the MSS peak value changes from the sub-surface layer to the pavement surface.