Effect of adaptive cruise control systems on traffic flow

The flow of traffic composed of vehicles that are equipped with adaptive cruise control (ACC) is studied using simulations. The ACC vehicles are modeled by a linear dynamical equation that has string stability. In platoons of all ACC vehicles, perturbations due to changes in the lead vehicle’s velocity do not cause jams. Simulations of merging flows near an onramp show that if the total incoming rate does not exceed the capacity of the single outgoing lane, free flow is maintained. With larger incoming flows, a state closely related to the synchronized flow phase found in manually driven vehicular traffic has been observed. This state, however, should not be considered congested because the flow is maximal for the density. Traffic composed of random sequences of ACC vehicles and manual vehicles has also been studied. At high speeds $\left(\sim 30\mathrm{m}∕\mathrm{s}\right)$ jamming occurs for concentrations of ACC vehicles of $10\%$ or less. At $20\%$ no jams are formed. The formation of jams is sensitive to the sequence of vehicles (ACC or manual). At lower speeds $\left(\sim 15\mathrm{m}∕\mathrm{s}\right)$, no critical concentration for complete jam suppression is found. Rather, the average velocity in the pseudojam region increases with increasing ACC concentration. Mixing $50\%$ ACC vehicles randomly with manually driven vehicles on the primary lane in onramp simulations shows only modestly reduced travel times and larger flow rates.