Analysis of honk effect on the traffic flow in a cellular automaton model

The paper mainly studies the following vehicle's honk effect on the driver of its predecessors in the single-lane cellular automaton model (CA model); besides, the determined condition of honk's state is investigated in detail, which has seldom been studied before. Then, the influence of honk sensitivity threshold and slow-to-start sensitivity threshold on the traffic flow is examined: the numerical simulations indicate that the smaller the honk sensitivity threshold or the larger the slow-to-start sensitivity threshold, a heavier synchronized flow can be maintained. Three main factors of S -> J transition are then analyzed and the process of S -> J transition is observed. Finally, a contrastive study is made on the performances of three different CA models from four aspects, it is evidenced that the performance of the new CA model proposed in the paper is the best and more consistent with the real traffic. Therefore, the following vehicle's honk effect should not be neglected in study of the traffic flow. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.