Abstract
This paper discusses the conditions under which longitudinal disturbances in strings of coupled vehicles can be made to attenuate as they travel upstream. The "slinky" effect is defined as the condition where these disturbances are amplified, a condition that can lead to collisions among upstream vehicles. Input/output linearization is applied to linearize the spacing error to throttle dynamics. Well known linear norm relationships are then applied to investigate the "slinky" effect. It is shown that broadcasting the velocity and acceleration of the lead vehicle to all vehicles in the string is sufficient to eliminate the slinky effect. (A)