Research of vehicle flow based on cellular automaton in different safety parameters

Abstract

In this paper, the cellular automaton model is put forward to evaluate the effect of the different drivers’ psychology in the two-lane highway. Each value of safety parameter βji, used to reflect the jth vehicle driver’s psychology in the ith lane, represents his or her cautious or risky preference. Assuming that βji follows normal distribution, whose mathematical expectation is β, we generate a stochastic safety coefficient for each driver in the simulation area. Based on different values of β, the vehicle flow and density are contrasted under some different traffic rules such as driving on the right, free overtaking and non-overtaking with low speed limitation. Through the cellular automaton simulation, the results demonstrate that safety parameter has less influence on the traffic flow under the lightest and heaviest traffic. Meanwhile, non-overtaking with the lowest speed limitation can increase the traffic flow in the light traffic. Free overtaking can improve the usage of the highway. With the increase of vehicle, non-overtaking with the lowest speed limitation will be of benefit to improving the traffic flow.