I hope you keep it up and maybe have a follow up post where you can fix some of the flaws.
Some of your ideas are correct and noble. But always remember to take into account the real world driver and his/her behavioral flaws.
Few thoughts: Interesting would be a stochastic behavior model of drivers + driving strategies and in connection with red lights, accidents, rush hour to see what happens. Thought, that model would be quite some work in python.
Cheers