  The emerging connected and automated vehicle technologies allow vehicles to
perceive and process traffic information in a wide spatial range. Modeling
nonlocal interactions between connected vehicles and analyzing their impact on
traffic flows become important research questions to traffic planners. This
paper considers a particular nonlocal LWR model that has been studied in the
literature. The model assumes that vehicle velocities are controlled by the
traffic density distribution in a nonlocal spatial neighborhood. By conducting
stability analysis of the model, we obtain that, under suitable assumptions on
how the nonlocal information is utilized, the nonlocal traffic flow is stable
around the uniform equilibrium flow and all traffic waves dissipate
exponentially. Meanwhile, improper use of the nonlocal information in the
vehicle velocity selection could result in persistent traffic waves. Such
results can shed light to the future design of driving algorithms for connected
and automated vehicles.
