  We study kinetic models for traffic flow characterized by the property of
producing backward propagating waves. These waves may be identified with the
phenomenon of stop-and-go waves typically observed on highways. In particular,
a refined modeling of the space of the microscopic speeds and of the
interaction rate in the kinetic model allows to obtain weakly unstable backward
propagating waves in dense traffic, without relying on non-local terms or
multi--valued fundamental diagrams. A stability analysis of these waves is
carried out using the Chapman-Enskog expansion. This leads to a BGK-type model
derived as the mesoscopic limit of a Follow-The-Leader or Bando model, and its
macroscopic limit belongs to the class of second-order Aw-Rascle and Zhang
models.
