Computational Essay: Intelligent Driver Model (IDM)

This repository contains a short computational essay exploring car-following behaviour using the Intelligent Driver Model (IDM).

The main notebook simulates a two-car, no-overtaking scenario and studies how the follower’s velocity evolves over time for different initial gaps.

Contents

• essay.ipynb — main essay notebook (IDM model + simulations + plots)
• requirements.txt — minimal Python dependencies

Setup

Use a virtual environment (recommended)

From the repository root:

python -m venv .venv
source venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -r requirements.txt

Notes

• Units and modelling assumptions (e.g., speed limit, safe time headway, minimum gap) are documented directly in essay.ipynb.

Reproducibility tips

• Use a fresh environment and install from requirements.txt.
• If plots look different across machines, check your Matplotlib version.