Traffic shockwave mitigation with human-driven vehicles: is it feasible?

Traffic shockwave is one of the major causes for low road capacity and traffic jams. This paper seeks to answer an important question in the development of a traffic shockwave mitigation system: is it feasible to have human-driven vehicles as part of the system? To answer the question, we developed a real-time speed advisory system, utilizing vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications and intuitive user interface, so that the driver can actively match the speed of the vehicle directly in front. Real-world measurement results show that such a speed advisory system can reduce the reaction delay by as much as 76.4% and reduce the standard deviation of the distance between two consecutive vehicles by as much as 40.7%. The results imply positive answer to the question, and suggest that traffic shockwave mitigation can be effectively implemented on human-driven vehicles that accounts for most vehicle population in the near future.