Stability of the car-following model on two lanes

In the case of two-lane traffic, vehicle drivers always worry about the lane changing actions from neighbor lane. This paper studies the stability of a car-following model on two lanes which incorporates the lateral effects in traffic. The stability condition of the model is obtained by using the linear stability theory. The modified Korteweg-de Vries equation is constructed and solved, and three types of traffic flows in the headway-sensitivity space-stable, metastable, and unstable-are classified. Both analytical and simulation results show that the anxiousness about lane changing from neighbor lane indeed has influence upon people's driving behavior and the consideration of lateral effects could stabilize the traffic flows on both lanes.