Resilient Highways: Experiments in Traffic Smoothing

Phantom traffic jams seemingly occur without a cause, but they are due to human driving behavior. Vehicles with driver assist features such as adaptive cruise control are now widely available on modern cars. These vehicles can either create phantom traffic jams like human drivers, or eliminate them, depending on the system design. This talk will introduce a new instrument known as I-24 MOTION, which measures phantom jams and other traffic phenomena that make commutes unpredictable by observing, anonymizing, and analyzing real-time activities along a stretch of urban interstate. The session will also describe recent field experiments using a fleet of 100 vehicles with lightly modified driver assist systems to smooth traffic jams in live traffic.