Macroscopic effects of reaction time on traffic flow characteristics

Reaction time is defined as a physiological parameter reflecting the period of time between perceiving a stimulus and performing a relevant action. In the traffic flow theory literature, the effects of reaction time on string stability have been described using the microscopic modeling approach. This paper presents a distinct approach to investigate how reaction time influences traffic flow stability using a macroscopic model. In the paper, the distinction between string stability and flow stability is defined. The flow stability conditions are derived based on the macroscopic model, which is developed from a gas-kinetic principle. From linear analysis, we find that at macroscopic scale the reaction time influences how instabilities propagate but does not contribute to whether those ( linear) instabilities occur. Nevertheless, nonlinear analysis might give a different view on the impact of reaction time on traffic flow stability, but the effect is nonlinear. We argue that the findings provide a better understanding of the effects of reaction time on traffic flow characteristics.