  To investigate the impact of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) on urban congestion,
this study looks at their performance at road intersections. Intersection
performance has been studied across a range of traffic densities using a simple
MATLAB simulation of two intersecting 1-D flows of homogeneous automated
vehicles. This lacks the detail of more advanced simulations, but it enables
fast identification of fundamental behaviours. The results show that there are
distinct crossing regimes at low, medium and high densities. Furthermore, the
transitions between regimes can be predicted analytically and their performance
related to the fundamental model of 1-D traffic flow. These findings have the
potential to focus efforts on the development of improved decision-making rules
for emerging AVs.
