Improved Safe Distance Car-following Model

Gipps' model, the well-known safe distance car-following model, has a strict restriction on the car-following behavior, that is, the following vehicle has to maintain the exact safe distance with the leading vehicle to avoid accident.However, this restriction is not consistent with the reality.Owning to this reson, an enhanced safe distance car-following model was proposed first, and then evaluated by comparing with Gipps' model.Furthermore, simulations were conducted to analyze the characteristics of the new model.The results of evaluation and simulation illustrate that the proposed model has more accurate prediction result than Gipps' model, and can reproduce the stable flow and shockwave that are very common in real traffic flow.In addition, the enhanced model can stabilize traffic flow.