Towards Eliminating Overreacted Vehicular Maneuvers: Part II Comparative Analyses

Abstract

Microscopic car following models are of great importance to traffic flow studies and vehicular dynamics reproducing. The Full Velocity Difference (FVD) model is a well-known example with satisfactory simulation performances in most times. However, by analyzing the structure of the model formula, we find that it can sometimes generate overreacted vehicular maneuvers such as unrealistically strong (overshooting for short) accelerations or decelerations that conflict with normal driver habits or even beyond the actual vehicular acceleration/deceleration performance, especially when the target vehicle encounter a leader cut-in or move-out (leader lane change for short). As Part II of the entire research, this paper conducts performance comparative analyses between the existing FVD model and the capped Full Velocity Difference (capped-FVD) model introduced in Part I of the research (the other companion paper) to address the above deficiency, and the results indicate that both models are equivalent in most times but the capped-FVD model will outperform the existing FVD model in aforementioned traffic scenarios since overreacted vehicular maneuvers (overshooting accelerations or decelerations) are totally eliminated. In other words, the aforementioned deficiency of the existing FVD model is totally corrected by the capped-FVD model and the capped-FVD model is a better choice for simulating vehicle movements in multi-lane roadways.