Situations in traffic - how quickly they change

Abstract

Spatio-temporal correlations of traffic intensity are analyzed employing data collected for the motorway M-30 around Madrid during one week in January 2009. We found that the lifetime of these correlations is the shortest in the evening between 6:00 p. m. and 8:00 p. m. This lifetime represents a new indicator for the amount of attention that is demanded by drivers in given traffic conditions. © 2011 Versita Warsaw and Springer-Verlag Wien.