Abstract:
During the attempt line up into a dense traffic people have
necessarily to share a limited space under turbulent conditions.
From the statistical point view it generally leads to a probability
distribution of distances between the traffic objects (cars or
pedestrians). But the problem is not restricted on humans. It comes
up again when we try to describe the statistics of distances between
perching birds or moving sheep herd. Our aim is to demonstrate that
the spacing distribution is generic and independent on the nature of
the object considered. We show that this fact is based on the
(mainly unconscious) perception of space that people share with
animals. We give a simple mathematical model of this phenomenon and
prove its validity on real traffic data. The data include the
spacing distributions between cars parked in parallel, the
perching birds followed by the car headway distribution, the
distribution of distances between walking pedestrians and the
distances inside a sheep herd.
