Microscopic analysis of desired-speed car-following phenomena

Abstract

A car-following model is proposed in. this paper. The proposed model presents a new concept to describe car-following process. Repulsion and thrust act on a following vehicle, and the following vehicle chooses an appropriate speed under the repulsion and the thrust. Illustrative simulations are presented. The simulation result indicates that the proposed model is reasonable, and it can reflect some traffic flow phenomena, such as local stability, asymptotically stability, closing-in, and shying-away. It is worth mentioning that the proposed model employ driver desired speed as model variable so that the proposed model can explain why drivers keep different speeds or different gaps under the same condition. The proposed microscopic model can be the research basis of macroscopic traffic flow model.