| Moving Like a Solid Block (2007) | |||||||||||||
Abstract | |||||||||||||
| of interest because, in addition to its intrinsic economic value, it throws light on a number of dynamical social phenomena which result when individual drivers try to maximize their own utilities while dealing with those of others and the overall constraints imposed by traffic rules and physical limitations [9,10]. While individuals make their own decisions so as to when to pass, accelerate or even enter into a heavily transited multilane road [11--13], the externalities that they create make for traffic patterns that can at times be very regular, as exemplified by moving jam fronts [14] or synchronization patterns among adjacent lanes with low average velocity but high traffic flow [15]. In what follows we exhibit a new type of collective behavior that we discovered when studying the dynamics of a diverse set of vehicles, such as trucks and cars, with different velocities travelling through a highway. As the density of vehicles in the road increases, there is a transition into a high | |||||||||||||
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