Influence of vehicle cluster driving behavior on traffic flow efficiency

To study on the influence of Vehicle Cluster Driving (VCD) behavior on Traffic Flow Efficiency on freeway, a new two-lane cellular automaton model which has been improved the accelerate, decelerate and change lane regulation of NaSch cellular automaton is proposed. By comparing the influence of vehicle cluster driving behavior with Vehicle Free Driving (VFD) behavior on average vehicle speed and Lane Changing (LC) frequency, the result shows us that the average vehicle speed of VCD behavior is higher than VFD behavior with the increasing of traffic flow, at the same time the change rate of average vehicle speed of VCD behavior is less than VFD behavior. The lane changing frequency presents a single peak distribution which is increasing first and then decreasing with the increasing of traffic flow both in VCD behavior and VFD behavior. The simulation result shows that the lane changing frequency of VCD behavior reached the peak value when the traffic flow near 1000veh/h and the lane changing frequency of VFD behavior reached the peak value when the traffic flow near 2200veh/h.