Traffic Congestion Mitigation Using Intelligent Driver Model (IDM) Combined with Lane Changes - Why Congestion Detection is So Needed?

Our study unveils what smart cars are needed to minimize congestion by traffic stability. We have previously considered pacer cars with single lane road networks based on a car following model, e.g. adaptive cruise control (ACC). However, pacer cars may have a limitation with multi-lane roadways in terms of lane distribution of traffic and shockwave suppression. Therefore, we motivate building a new smart car which extends the capability of pacer cars allowing lane changing at the timing of congestion detection. In essence, the congestion detection plays a role of adjusting the (time) headway of smart cars to determine whether lane changes should be undertaken. Lane changes can be used to uniformize (or equalize) lane distribution for traffic (flow) stability. Our simulation study has suggested that the proposed smart cars enforce the capability of traffic stability more than manual and pacer cars. As a result, we conclude that congestion detection would correspond to a boundary between the “longitudinal” and “lateral” driving tasks.