Effect of looking backward on traffic flow in a cooperative driving car following model

An extended car following model is proposed by incorporating intelligent transportation system and the backward looking effect under certain condition in traffic flow. The neutral stability condition of this model is obtained by using the linear stability theory. The results show that anticipating the behavior of vehicles preceding and following one vehicle could lead to appreciable stabilization of traffic system. From the simulation of space-time evolution of the vehicle headways, it is shown that the traffic jam could be suppressed efficiently via taking into account the information about the motion of two preceding vehicles and one following vehicle, and the analytical result is consistent with the simulation one. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2006