A new car-following model considering lateral separation and overtaking expectation

In order to depict the real car-following behaviors better, in this paper we present a new car-following model by introducing the effect parameter of lateral separation distance and proposing the concepts of overtaking expectation and virtual front car based on OV model. The stability condition of the model is obtained by using the linear stability theory. It is found that with the increase of lateral separation and overtaking expectation, the stability region of traffic flow increases at a low density while it decreases at a high density. The results of numerical simulation verify the analytic results. Thus, in some places like traffic bottlenecks, which usually have a high traffic density, it is necessary to restrict the lateral movement and overtaking behavior of vehicles for suppressing the traffic jam.