Stop and Go Traffic? Gone with Self-Driving Cars.

Study shows autonomous vehicles can help improve traffic flow

Improvements in traffic flow and fuel consumption are boosted when even a few autonomous vehicles are immersed in bulk traffic, according to research by a Rutgers University-Camden scholar, Benedetto Piccoli, and a team of ...

 From article, (Improvements in traffic flow and fuel consumption are boosted when even a few autonomous vehicles are immersed in bulk traffic, according to research by a Rutgers University-Camden scholar, Benedetto Piccoli, and a team of researchers who recently presented their findings to policymakers in Washington, D.C.

At an exhibit at the Washington Auto Show on Jan. 24 and 25, the multidisciplinary team of researchers with expertise in traffic flow theory, control theory, robotics, cyber-physical systems, and transportation engineering demonstrated to policymakers how autonomous vehicles in their National Science Foundation-funded study helped to prevent traffic jams and can dissipate them when they appear.

The NSF invited the researchers to discuss their work with auto industry leaders and government officials, including U.S. Senator John Thune, chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Human drivers naturally create stop-and-go traffic, such as when someone makes a lane change or merges, or because of natural oscillations in human driving. The researchers found that by controlling the pace of the autonomous car in their field experiments, the autonomous car controlled the traffic flow by dissipating the stop-and-go waves so that traffic wasn't oscillating as it does when all of the cars are driven by humans. The researchers determined that even a small percentage of autonomous vehicles (5 percent) could have a significant impact in eliminating waves and reducing the total fuel consumption by up to 40 percent and the braking events by up to 99 percent.)

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