Near-collision dynamics in a noisy car-following model

Abstract

We consider a small stochastic perturbation of an optimal velocity car-following model. We give a detailed analysis of behavior near the collision singularity. We show that collision is impossible in a simplified model without noise, and then we show that collision is asymptotically unlikely over large time intervals in presence of small noise, with large time interval scaling like a square of the reciprocal of the strength of the noise. Our calculations depend on careful boundary-layer analyses.