  Recent advances in vehicle connectivity have allowed formation of autonomous
vehicle platoons for improved mobility and traffic throughput. In order to
avoid a pile-up in such platoons, it is important to ensure platoon (string)
stability, which is the focus of this work. As per conventional definition of
string stability, the power (2-norm) of the spacing error signals should not
amplify downstream in a platoon. But in practice, it is the infinity-norm of
the spacing error signal that dictates whether a collision occurs. We address
this discrepancy in the first part of our work, where we reconsider string
stability from a safety perspective and develop an upper limit on the maximum
spacing error in a homogeneous platoon as a function of the acceleration
maneuver of the lead vehicle. In the second part of this paper, we extend our
previous results by providing the minimum achievable time headway for platoons
with two-predecessor lookup schemes experiencing burst-noise packet losses.
Finally, we utilize throttle and brake maps to develop a longitudinal vehicle
model and validate it against a Lincoln MKZ which is then used for numerical
corroboration of the proposed time headway selection algorithms.
