A Decentralized Strategy for Cooperative Driving among Autonomous Cars at Lane Closures

This paper presents a cooperative driving strategy - Follow Along Strategy (FAS) - for autonomous cars, aimed at improving traffic conditions on a two-lane freeway with a lane closure. The strategy is designed to minimize communication requirements; cars only need an intimation of the lane closure. FAS is compared with two baseline cases based on current road scenarios - one where cars are informed of lane closures well ahead and another where they are not - via Agent-based Modeling (ABM) simulations. Results show that FAS increases traffic throughput while reducing the proximity between cars and keeping long halts at a minimum.