A new car-following model: full velocity and acceleration difference model

By introducing acceleration difference terms into the full velocity difference models (FVDM) by Jiang et al. (1995), we present a full velocity and acceleration difference model (FVADM). The main improvement upon the previous models is that the FVADM can exactly describe the driver’s behavior under an urgent case, where no collision occurs and no unrealistic deceleration appears in this model, while vehicles determined by the previous car-following models collide after only few seconds. The model is investigated by numerical methods. The simulation results indicate that the acceleration difference has an important impact on the traffic dynamics, especially under urgent conditions. Besides the urgent situations, the model still remains similar properties to those of the FVDM. In the model, the phase transition of traffic flow is observed, and the hysteresis loop is obtained in the headway- velocity plane, also. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2005