Earthquake Model Confirms Traffic Jams Caused by Tiredness

TL;DR

This paper introduces a spring-block model to simulate traffic jams on highways, analyzing phase transitions between free flow and congestion through extensive simulations and stop-time statistics.

Contribution

It presents a novel simplified one-dimensional model that captures the emergence and transition of traffic jams, validated by simulation data.

Findings

Existence of free and congested flow phases confirmed

Transition between phases analyzed and characterized

Model provides insights into traffic jam dynamics

Abstract

A simple one-dimensional spring-block model elaborated for the idealized single-lane highway traffic reveals the causes for the emergence of traffic jams. Based on the stop-time statistics of one car in the row, an order parameter is defined and studied. By extensive computer simulations, the parameter space of the model is explored, analyzed and interpreted. Existence of a free a and congested flow phases is confirmed and the transition between them is analyzed.