Heterogeneous traffic flow modeling with drivers' timid and aggressive characteristics*

The driver's characteristics (e.g., timid and aggressive) has been proven to greatly affect the traffic flow performance, whereas the underlying assumption in most of the existing studies is that all drivers are homogeneous. In the real traffic environment, the drivers are distinct due to a variety of factors such as personality characteristics. To better reflect the reality, we introduce the penetration rate to describe the degree of drivers' heterogeneity (i.e., timid and aggressive), and proceed to propose a generalized heterogeneous car-following model with different driver's characteristics. Through the linear stability analysis, the stability conditions of the proposed heterogeneous traffic flow model are obtained based on the perturbation method. The impacts of the penetration rate of drivers with low intensity, the average value and standard deviation of intensity parameters characterizing two types of drivers on the stability of traffic flow are analyzed by simulation. Results show that higher penetration of aggressive drivers contributes to traffic flow stability. The average value has a great impact on the stability of traffic flow, whereas the impact of the standard deviation is trivial.

Automated summary

The characteristics of drivers greatly affect traffic flow performance, with a proposed model considering different drivers' characteristics and analyzing the impact of driver penetration rates on traffic flow stability through simulation. Results show that higher penetration of aggressive drivers contributes to traffic flow stability.