Game-Changing Flow-Centric Traffic Orchestration - A Novel Framework for Stabilizing Mixed-Traffic Dynamics

The recent rise in traffic flow instability and fatal accidents has become a central concern for transportation researchers and policy makers. Hansa Tek Netics (HTN) observes that technology-enabled vehicles - equipped with Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) - exhibit driving dynamics that diverge from those of human-driven vehicles. This divergence creates interaction conflicts that may amplify disturbances in mixed traffic, thereby contributing to the traffic’s metastability on freeways. To investigate this hypothesis, we developed a flow-centric analytical framework and analyzed the metastability phenomenon. Using both simulation and field observations, we examined how mismatched control philosophies between human and automated vehicles propagate disturbances across traffic streams. Results show that even small differences in dynamics cause positive feedback and trigger instabilities that spread nonlinearly through the flow. We observe that conventional traffic management strategies fail to mitigate these instabilities at scale. Our findings highlight the urgent need for new traffic architectures that harmonize human and automated driving behaviors. We introduce a novel dynamic framework that integrates mixed traffic into a uniform control paradigm, supported by one pending and two granted U.S. patents. This approach has the potential to significantly reduce flow breakdowns, enhance safety, and maximize freeway capacity. The study contributes to understanding the mechanisms of instability in mixed-autonomy environments and proposes a scalable pathway toward resilient and equitable mass mobility.