Effectiveness of Information from Vehicles beyond Nearest Vehicle Ahead for Traffic Flow

A driver usually controls the vehicle according to only the information from the nearest leader vehicle. If the information from the other leader vehicles is also available, the driver can control the vehicle more adequately. The aim of this study is to discuss the effectiveness of the information from the other leader vehicles than the nearest one for the traffic flow. For this purpose, the traffic flow is modeled by using the Chandler-type multi-vehicle-following model. This model changes the vehicle acceleration rate according to the velocity differences between the vehicle and its multileader vehicles. After the model stability analysis, the traffic flow simulation is performed. The results reveal that the stable region of the model parameters expands according to the increase of the number of the leader vehicles.