2021/06/19 by M. Herty, Herty, M., G. Puppo +3
Engineering · Social Sciences · #35Q20 #35Q70 #76A30 #FOS: Physical sciences #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Traffic Prediction and Management Techniques #Traffic control and management #Transportation Planning and Optimization
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2107.14081
openalex publication_date 2021/06/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study a hierarchy of models based on kinetic equations for the descriptions of traffic flow in presence of autonomous and human--driven vehicles. The autonomous cars considered in this paper are thought of as vehicles endowed with some degree of autonomous driving which decreases the stochasticity of the drivers' behavior. Compared to the existing literature, we do not model autonomous cars as externally controlled vehicles. We investigate whether this feature is enough to provide a stabilization of traffic instabilities such as stop and go waves. We propose two indicators to quantify traffic instability and we find, with analytical and numerical tools, that traffic instabilities are damped as the penetration rate of the autonomous vehicles increases.