Contribution to the platoon distribution analysis in steady-state traffic conditions

Abstract

The traffic flow analysis and the relevant vehicle distribution (“free-moving” or “platooned” vehicles) on highway facilities at uninterrupted flow has always had fundamental importance in Highway Engineering, with special reference to topics like traffic operations, car accidents, road safety and air pollution emissions. In light of this, the study suggests a calculation algorithm as a random test generator to simulate a steady state traffic flow and to provide time headways. Thanks to the outcome produced by numerical simulations, we analysed platoon distributions within traffic flows in a steady-state regime and showed the results of numerical analyses carried out by traffic random process functions. The laws to determine “time headways” were obtained by the Pearson type III generalized distribution.