Analysis of Phase Transition in Traffic Flow based on a New Model of Driving Decision

Different driving decisions will cause different processes of phase transition in traffic flow. To reveal the inner mechanism, this paper built a new cellular automaton (CA) model, based on the driving decision (DD). In the DD model, a driver's decision is divided into three stages: decision-making, action, and result. The acceleration is taken as a decision variable and three core factors, i.e. distance between adjacent vehicles, their own velocity, and the preceding vehicle's velocity, are considered. Simulation results show that the DD model can simulate the synchronized flow effectively and describe the phase transition in traffic flow well. Further analyses illustrate that various density will cause the phase transition and the random probability will impact the process. Compared with the traditional NaSch model, the DD model considered the preceding vehicle's velocity, the deceleration limitation, and a safe distance, so it can depict closer to the driver preferences on pursuing safety, stability and fuel-saving and has strong theoretical innovation for future studies.