English

Human behavior as origin of traffic phases

Statistical Mechanics 2009-11-07 v1

Abstract

It is shown that the desire for smooth and comfortable driving is directly responsible for the occurrence of complex spatio-temporal structures (``synchronized traffic'') in highway traffic. This desire goes beyond the avoidance of accidents which so far has been the main focus of microscopic modeling and which is mainly responsible for the other two phases observed empirically, free flow and wide moving jams. These features have been incorporated into a microscopic model based on stochastic cellular automata and the results of computer simulations are compared with empirical data. The simple structure of the model allows for very fast implementations of realistic networks. The level of agreement with the empirical findings opens new perspectives for reliable traffic forecasts.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0107051,
  title  = {Human behavior as origin of traffic phases},
  author = {Wolfgang Knospe and Ludger Santen and Andreas Schadschneider and Michael Schreckenberg},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0107051},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, 4 figures, colour figures with reduced resolution