Influence of lateral discomfort on the stability of traffic flow based on visual angle car-following model

Liang Zheng, Shiquan Zhong, Peter J. Jin and Shoufeng Ma

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2012, vol. 391, issue 23, 5948-5959

Abstract: Due to the poor road markings and irregular driving behaviors, not every vehicle is positioned in the center of the lane. The deviation from the center can cause discomfort to drivers in the neighboring lane, which is referred to as lateral discomfort (or lateral friction). Such lateral discomfort can be incorporated into the driver stimulus–response framework by considering the visual angle and its changing rate from the psychological viewpoint. In this study, a two-lane visual angle based car-following model is proposed and its stability condition is obtained through linear stability theory. Further derivations indicate that the neutral stability line of the model is asymmetry and four factors including the vehicle width and length, the lateral separation and the sensitivity regarding the changing rate of visual angle have large impacts on the stability of traffic flow. Numerical simulations further verify these theoretical results, and demonstrate that the behaviors of diverging, merging and lane changing can break the original steady state and cause traffic fluctuations. However, these fluctuations may be alleviated to some extent by reducing the lateral discomfort.

Keywords: Car following; Lateral discomfort; Visual angle; Stability analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:391:y:2012:i:23:p:5948-5959

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2012.06.069

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