Platooning on Two-lane Two-way Highways: An Empirical Investigation

This paper presents an empirical investigation into platooning on two-lane two-way highways. A total of six data sets from three study sites in the state of Montana were used in this investigation. Field data included individual vehicle speed, time gap, and vehicle classification. The study confirmed that interaction between successive vehicles on the same lane in the traffic stream generally diminishes beyond a time headway threshold value that fell in the range of 5-7 seconds. Also, the study revealed that very short headways are more associated with aggressive driving and higher speeds and that the amount of impedance to traffic is proportional to the size of platoon.