Human behavior as origin of traffic phases

Abstract

It is shown that the desire for smooth and comfortable driving is directly responsible for the occurrence of complex spatio-temporal structures (``synchronized traffic'') in highway traffic. This desire goes beyond the avoidance of accidents which so far has been the main focus of microscopic modeling and which is mainly responsible for the other two phases observed empirically, free flow and wide moving jams. These features have been incorporated into a microscopic model based on stochastic cellular automata and the results of computer simulations are compared with empirical data. The simple structure of the model allows for very fast implementations of realistic networks. The level of agreement with the empirical findings opens new perspectives for reliable traffic forecasts.

4 pages, 4 figures, colour figures with reduced resolution

References in corpus (2)

• Towards a realistic microscopic description of highway traffic
• Random walk theory of jamming in a cellular automaton model for traffic flow

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Cellular Automata Models of Road Traffic
• Delays, Inaccuracies and Anticipation in Microscopic Traffic Models
• Cellular automata approach to three-phase traffic theory
• Control of Spatial-Temporal Congested Traffic Patterns at Highway Bottlenecks
• Memory effects in microscopic traffic models and wide scattering in flow-density data
• Single-vehicle data of highway traffic: microscopic description of traffic phases
• An empirical test for cellular automaton models of traffic flow
• Steady state solutions of hydrodynamic traffic models
• Agents for Traffic Simulation