Highway Capacity Benefits from Using Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication and Sensors for Collision Avoidance

Abstract

Several automobile manufacturers are offering assisted driving systems that use sensors to automatically brake automobiles to avoid collisions. Before extensively deploying these systems, we should determine how they will affect highway capacity. The goal of this paper is to compare the highway capacity when using sensors alone and when using sensors and vehicle-to-vehicle communication. To achieve this goal, the rules for using both technologies to prevent collisions are proposed, and highway capacity is estimated based on these rules. We show that both technologies can increase highway capacity. The increase in capacity is a function of the fraction of the vehicles that use a technology. If all of the vehicles use sensors alone, the increase in highway capacity is about 43%. While if all of the vehicles use both sensors and vehicle-to-vehicle communication, the increase is about 273%.