Effects of anticipatory driving in a traffic flow model

TL;DR

This paper investigates how anticipatory driving influences traffic flow, revealing that drivers estimating future velocities can lead to higher flows and realistic short headways through a specific stochastic car-following model.

Contribution

It introduces a stochastic car-following model incorporating anticipation via next-nearest-neighbour interactions, explaining how this mechanism produces realistic traffic patterns and short headways.

Findings

Anticipation leads to increased traffic flow and shorter headways.

Headways organize into an alternating pattern with anti-correlation.

Model reproduces short headways observed in real traffic.

Abstract

Anticipation in traffic means that drivers estimate their leaders' velocities for future timesteps. In the article a specific stochastic car--following model with non--unique flow--density relation is investigated with respect to anticipatory driving. It is realized by next--nearest--neighbour interaction which leads to large flows and short temporal headways. The underlying mechanism that causes these effects is explained by the headways of the cars which organize in an alternating structure with a short headway following a long one, thereby producing a strong anti-correlation in the gaps or in the headways of subsequent cars. For the investigated model the corresponding time headway distributions display the short headways observed in reality. Even though these effects are discussed for a specific model, the mechanism described is in general present in any traffic flow models that work with anticipation.