A novel car following model considering average speed of preceding vehicles group

• A new car following model is proposed by considering the average speed effect of preceding vehicles group.
• The stable condition of the extended model has been explored.
• By means of the nonlinear analysis, we deduce the mKdV equation and obtain its kink–antikink soliton solution to describe the jamming transition.
• The results show that the average speed effect of preceding vehicles group can efficiently suppress the emergence of traffic jamming.

In this paper, a new car following model is presented by considering the average speed effect of preceding vehicles group in cyber–physical systems (CPS) environment. The effect of this new consideration upon the stability of traffic flow is examined through linear stability analysis. A modified Korteweg–de Vries (mKdV) equation was derived via nonlinear analysis to describe the propagating behavior of traffic density wave near the critical point. Good agreement between the simulation and the analytical results shows that average speed of preceding vehicles group leads to the stabilization of traffic systems, and thus can efficiently suppress the emergence of traffic jamming.