On a functional-differential equation arising from a traffic flow model (Q2903534)

The authors show that the search for traveling wave solutions of a partial differential equation modeling traffic flow leads to the nonlinear functional-differential equation NEWLINE\[NEWLINE\left( z\left( s\right) +\alpha \right) ^{2}z^{\prime }\left( s\right) =\beta \left( z\left( s+z\left( s\right) \right) -z\left( s\right) \right) .NEWLINE\]NEWLINE A numerical approximation procedure is described for this equation and an operator approach based on Schauder's fixed point theorem is suggested as a challenge for future investigations.