  This paper introduces a novel idea of coordinated vehicle platooning such
that platoon followers inside the platoon communicates only to the platoon
leader. A novel dynamic model is proposed to take driving safety into account
when there is communication delay. Some general results of linear stability are
proved mathematically, and numerical simulations are conducted to show the
effect of model parameters for both ring road with an initial disturbance and
infinite road with a periodic disturbance. The simulation results are
consistent with theoretical analysis, and demonstrate that the proposed
look-to-the-leader platooning strategy is far superior than the
follow-one-vehicle-ahead or follow-two-vehicle-ahead conventional car-following
(CF) strategies in stabilizing traffic flow. This paper provides a new
perspective for the organization of platoons of autonomous vehicles.
