A Cooperative Advanced Driver Assistance System to Mitigate Vehicular Traffic Shock Waves

We address the problem of shock wave formation in uncoordinated highway traffic. First, we identify the combination of heavy traffic and small traffic perturbations or unexpected driver actions as the main causes of highway traffic jams. Then we introduce a novel distributed communication protocol that enables us to eliminate upstream shock wave formation even with low system penetration rates. Based on traffic information ahead, we propose a Cooperative Advanced Driver Assistance System (CADAS) that recommends non-intuitive velocity reductions in order to redistribute traffic more uniformly thereby eliminating traffic peaks. Simulation results show that CADAS significantly increases the average velocity and therewith reduces the overall travel time and avoids unnecessary slowdowns.