In order to better depict the car-following behavior and improve the stability of traffic flow,an improved car-following model was proposed by using the lateral gap to determine the influence degree by the motion information of the front vehicles in the vehicle networking environment.Firstly,the critical stability conditions of the model were obtained by using the small perturbation method,and the stable region of the model was compared with that of the optimal velocity model and the full velocity difference model.Secondly,the changes of the stability region of the model under different lateral gaps and sensitivity coefficients of velocity difference were analyzed.Finally,under periodic boundary conditions,the evolution process of traffic flow described by the model after initial disturbance was investigated,and the simulation results of traffic flow under different lateral gaps and sensitivity coefficients of velocity difference were obtained.Both theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the traffic flow stability can be effectively enhanced by consid-ering the lateral gap and the motion information of the front vehicles.The improved carfollowing model can effectively enhance the stability of traffic flow,alleviate traffic congestion to a certain extent,and improve road capacity and traffic efficiency.