Quantitative analysis of interaction range in vehicular flows

Applying mathematical theory of functional convolutions we quantitatively detect a range of interaction forces inside ensembles of moving vehicles. With help of a certain specifically-calibrated function describing deflections between empirical multi-clearance distributions and distributions derived for Poissonian systems of uncorrelated agents we estimate the number of neighboring ve- hicles whose movements are significantly influenced (in a statistical sense). Furthermore, we demonstrate how the estimated interaction-range varies with traffic flux or traffic density. The obtained results convincingly confirms that vehicular dynamics is definitely not of short-ranged nature but, in contrast, that mutual inter-vehicular interactions exist among more succeeding cars.