Vehicle following for traffic safety has been an active area of research. Car-following distance control is key for vehicle following mode in autonomous cruise system. Sliding mode control has been applied in vehicle longitudinal distance control. But most of them ignore or simplify acceleration information and reduce control performance. The purpose of this paper is to design sliding mode control method considering relative acceleration parameter to control car-following distance for

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... cruise control (ACC). Meanwhile, tracking-differentiator is designed to estimate acceleration information as the control parameter and enhances the control system performance. Theoretical analysis and computer simulation prove that the designed linear tracking-differentiator can effectively estimate the relative acceleration and sliding mode control method considering relative acceleration parameter can also effectively control headway distance.