The effects of vehicular gap changes with memory on traffic flow in cooperative adaptive cruise control strategy

•To evaluate the impacts of new influence factor in cooperative adaptive cruise control strategy on traffic flow.•An improved car-following model considering multiple vehicular gap changes is developed.•The new strategy can improve the stability of traffic flow and enhance traffic safety.

To evaluate the impacts of new influence factor in cooperative adaptive cruise control strategy on the dynamic characteristics of traffic flow, an improved cooperative car-following model considering multiple vehicular gap changes with memory is developed to study the influences of multiple vehicular gap changes with memory on each car’s speed, acceleration and relative distance. Some numerical simulations are carried out and the results show that considering multiple vehicular gap changes with memory in designing the cooperative adaptive cruise control strategy can improve the stability of traffic flow and reduce the accidental probability.