Transforming Policy-Car Swerving for Mitigating Stop-and-Go Traffic Waves: A Practice-Oriented Jam-Absorption Driving Strategy

TL;DR

This paper proposes a practical jam-absorption driving strategy inspired by police-car swerving behavior to effectively suppress stop-and-go traffic waves, making the approach feasible for real-world implementation.

Contribution

It introduces a new, practice-oriented JAD strategy based on real-world observations and systematically analyzes key parameters affecting its effectiveness.

Findings

Successfully suppresses stop-and-go waves in simulations

Identifies key parameters influencing JAD effectiveness

Demonstrates practical measurement of parameters with roadside detectors

Abstract

Stop-and-go waves, as a major form of freeway traffic congestion, cause severe and long-lasting adverse effects, including reduced traffic efficiency, increased driving risks, and higher vehicle emissions. Amongst the highway traffic management strategies, jam-absorption driving (JAD), in which a dedicated vehicle performs "slow-in" and "fast-out" maneuvers before being captured by a stop-and-go wave, has been proposed as a potential method for preventing the propagation of such waves. However, most existing JAD strategies remain impractical mainly due to the lack of discussion regarding implementation vehicles and operational conditions. Inspired by real-world observations of police-car swerving behavior, this paper first introduces a Single-Vehicle Two-Detector Jam-Absorption Driving (SVDD-JAD) problem, and then proposes a practical JAD strategy that transforms such behavior into a maneuver capable of suppressing the propagation of an isolated stop-and-go wave. Five key parameters that significantly affect the proposed strategy, namely, JAD speed, inflow traffic speed, wave width, wave speed, and in-wave speed, are identified and systematically analyzed. Using a SUMO-based simulation as an illustrative example, we further demonstrate how these parameters can be measured in practice with two stationary roadside traffic detectors. The results show that the proposed JAD strategy successfully suppresses the propagation of a stop-and-go wave, without triggering a secondary wave. This paper is expected to take a significant step toward making JAD practical, advancing it from a theoretical concept to a feasible and implementable strategy. To promote reproducibility in the transportation domain, we have also open-sourced all the code on our GitHub repository https://github.com/gotrafficgo.