Analysis of drivers' characteristics in car-following theory

Abstract

In recent years, the influence of drivers' behaviors on traffic flow has attracted considerable attention according to Transportation Cyber Physical Systems. In this paper, an extended car-following model is presented by considering drivers' timid or aggressive characteristics. The impact of drivers' timid or aggressive characteristics on the stability of traffic flow has been analyzed through linear stability theory and nonlinear reductive perturbation method. Numerical simulation shows that the propagating behavior of traffic density waves near the critical point can be described by the kink–antikink soliton of the mKdV equation. The good agreement between the numerical simulation and the analytical results shows that drivers' characteristics play an important role in traffic jamming transition.