Phase transition in a mixture of adaptive cruise control vehicles and manual vehicles

In this paper, we have investigated the effects of adaptive cruise control (ACC) vehicles in a mixture with manually-controlled (manual) vehicles. The manual vehicles are simulated by using the modified comfortable driving model, which can describe synchronized traffic flow. The phase transition probabilities from free flow to synchronized flow and from synchronized flow to jams are studied. The impact of ACC vehicles on the flow rates in free flow and synchronized flow and on the propagation velocity of the downstream front of jams are investigated. The dependence of microscopic properties of traffic flow, including the spatiotemporal patterns and the velocity distribution, is explored. Our results are expected to be useful for developing ACC systems. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2007