On the Impact of Emergency Incidents on the Freeway: A Full Velocity Difference (FVD) Model Based Four-Lane Traffic Dynamics Simulation

Abstract

Freeway as a relatively close traffic system is extremely vulnerable to bottlenecks, especially those created by emergency incidents, such as traffic accident and vehicle breakdown. Usually, at least one lane will be either partially impacted or fully blocked. To have an in-depth understanding of the impact, we develop a four-lane traffic dynamic model and microscopically demonstrate the impact brought by bottlenecks on the freeway. We also incorporate a realistic FVD-based lane-changing trajectory by approximating the clothoid into cubic polynomials. Then, the lane-change cooperation can be realistically demonstrated as the time span of the lane change is not simplified as one simulation interval. By comparing the dynamic change of trajectories, we found that the communication with the preceding and the following vehicle of target lane are equally important to overall traffic performance.