A New Car-Following Model Inspired by Galton Board

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel car-following model inspired by the Galton Board, offering a new interpretation of vehicle headway distributions and effectively reproducing observed traffic flow phenomena.

Contribution

The paper presents a new car-following model based on Galton Board dynamics, differing from traditional scatter and random matrix theories, to better explain traffic flow patterns.

Findings

Model reproduces log-normal headway distribution

Simulation aligns with empirical traffic data

Proposes a new theoretical framework for traffic modeling

Abstract

Different from previous models based on scatter theory and random matrix theory, a new interpretation of the observed log-normal type time-headway distribution of vehicles is presented in this paper. Inspired by the well known Galton Board, this model views driver's velocity adjusting process similar to the dynamics of a particle falling down a board and being deviated at decision points. A new car-following model based on this idea is proposed to reproduce the observed traffic flow phenomena. The agreement between the empirical observations and the simulation results suggests the soundness of this new approach.