Transforming Policy-Car Swerving for Mitigating Stop-and-Go Traffic Waves: A Practice-Oriented Jam-Absorption Driving Strategy
Zhengbing He
TL;DR
This paper tackles the challenge of mitigating isolated stop-and-go traffic waves with a practical jam-absorption driving (JAD) strategy that does not rely on fully controllable CAV fleets. It introduces Single-Vehicle Two-Detector JAD (SVDD-JAD), inspired by police-car swerving, and derives a JAD plan A→B→C anchored by a moving JAD triangle with key parameters $v^*$, $v_t$, $ riangle_w$, $w$, and $v_w$. The authors provide analytical expressions for interaction distance $J_{ ext{dis}}$ and duration $J_{ ext{dur}}$, conduct a parameter-sensitivity analysis, and validate the approach via a SUMO-based simulation that demonstrates suppression of an isolated jam without triggering secondary waves; practical parameter estimation methods using two roadside detectors are discussed. The study shows the strategy is feasible within typical operation windows (roughly 1–3 minutes, 1–10 km) and highlights the importance of traffic stability understanding for choosing $v^*$, while showcasing that a non-CAV, implementable JAD vehicle can achieve jam absorption in real roads. Overall, SVDD-JAD advances JAD toward real-world deployment and provides open-source code to promote reproducibility and further validation in practice.
Abstract
Stop-and-go waves, as a major form of freeway traffic congestion, cause severe and long-lasting adverse effects, including reduced traffic efficiency, increased driving risks, and higher vehicle emissions. Amongst the highway traffic management strategies, jam-absorption driving (JAD), in which a dedicated vehicle performs "slow-in" and "fast-out" maneuvers before being captured by a stop-and-go wave, has been proposed as a potential method for preventing the propagation of such waves. However, most existing JAD strategies remain impractical mainly due to the lack of discussion regarding implementation vehicles and operational conditions. Inspired by real-world observations of police-car swerving behavior, this paper first introduces a Single-Vehicle Two-Detector Jam-Absorption Driving (SVDD-JAD) problem, and then proposes a practical JAD strategy that transforms such behavior into a maneuver capable of suppressing the propagation of an isolated stop-and-go wave. Five key parameters that significantly affect the proposed strategy, namely, JAD speed, inflow traffic speed, wave width, wave speed, and in-wave speed, are identified and systematically analyzed. Using a SUMO-based simulation as an illustrative example, we further demonstrate how these parameters can be measured in practice with two stationary roadside traffic detectors. The results show that the proposed JAD strategy successfully suppresses the propagation of a stop-and-go wave, without triggering a secondary wave. This paper is expected to take a significant step toward making JAD practical, advancing it from a theoretical concept to a feasible and implementable strategy. To promote reproducibility in the transportation domain, we have also open-sourced all the code on our GitHub repository https://github.com/gotrafficgo.