Traffic Management by Constant Time to Collision

The paper is presenting a new method for the management of the traffic flow on highways, based on the constant time to collision criterion. The criterion is applied at two levels, for each car implied in traffic, and for the whole highway. Each car is provided with a constant time to collision cruise controller, that is maintaining optimal distance-gaps between cars, in accordance to the technical data of each car, the actual speed, and an imposed time to collision. The highway’s traffic management center has the possibility to impose the same optimal time to collision to all the cars in the traffic. This way the traffic is permanently organizing itself, by distributing the cars such way that the collision risk is uniformly distributed. The traffic intensity is controlled by the imposed time to collision.