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George Carlin explains it pretty simply
The people at the front are morons and probably in the wrong lane.
You don’t like driving 55 in the passing lane? You get such a great view of everyone flipping you off!
Its because of two things. One is that people hog the passing lane or try to pass slowly so it takes them a few minutes to overtake a few cars, and also because people drive at different speeds. Some people drive at the speed that feels comfortable, others drive the state imposed speed limit. This creates pockets of dense traffic, and then people try to pass, but there is always the person who tries to pass as slow as possible because they are going a few mph over the speed limit.
Its really just a bad combination of laws, and drivers who are terrified of breaking the law, and people who dont know how to drive correctly in a way to reduce traffic. Also many people are just never consider that others also need to use the roads. They don’t care about traffic. Some people also have health issues, like blindness, or mental handicaps, which means driving at interstate speeds is about all they can muster.
Hey, if you have some physical limitation and cannot or are simply not comfortable going faster, that’s 100% fine (assuming you can operate a car safely). Stay the hell in the right lane and never leave it, thanks
People changing lanes
If everyone stuck to the driving lane and only moved over to pass one car in front of them then there’d be less.
Which one of these is the “driving lane”?
The far right.
So, all cars in the far right lane unless they’re passing someone in the far right lane, in which case they should be in the lane that’s second from the right? All other lanes should be empty at all times?
Yes. (If a lane is closed then the furthest open right lane)
So, you think traffic here would flow better if 4 lanes were completely unused, one lane was only used for passing, and everyone else was in the remaining lane? And you could achieve this without replacing the drivers with robots?
Yes, more lanes result in more traffic because there’s more lanes to cut across for each exit.
There are also more lanes for the cars to move forward in.
basically it’s a thing with cars where if a single car slows down for any reason, even slightly, it causes a cascade effect that leads to traffic jams.
Yet another reason why cars suck.
Similar to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence The gist of it is that once you reach critical density people can not drive homogenously anymore and (de-) accelerate constantly to not bump into the next car. The problem could be alleviated with self driving cars which negotiate a uniform speed.
The problem is solved by connecting all the cars, and putting them on rails that are electrified. This way you move fuel off site, and the cars are synced by the connection.
I was always dreaming about some kind of “individual public transport” (I think minority report had a nice example, because there the transport is part of your flat and thus doesn’t waste space when not moving), which interconnects into trains for longer distances. Currently it would probably be only freezable for Intercity ranges, otherwise the coupling process takes longer than the drive.
Also, you can charge electric cars through induction rings in the street, like mobile phones. The efficiency is not the best though.
self driving cars which negotiate a uniform speed.
Until then, human drivers could approximate this system by all agreeing on a uniform speed. Maybe through some sort of app?
Or, this sounds crazy, perhaps the authorities could post signs by the side of the highway with the uniform speed printed on it?
Your solution is a dream. Real solutions already exist, it’s called mass transit.
The problem could be alleviated with self driving cars which negotiate a uniform speed.
Other than the obvious public transit solution comment, you are aware that ACC exists right?
We literally have the technology on almost all new cars to keep a uniform distance from the car in front of it. Even without that if people realized you can save fuck all time by speeding on your 30 mile commute we could have cars moving at the speed limit and just have smooth traffic flow without any need for self-driving
A few years ago, I was bitching and moaning about a jam, and my pal just said “you’re not in traffic, you are traffic”.
I know it’s nothing more than a cheeky soundbite but just reframing it like that and knowing I’m part of the problem rather than the exception has made me a lot calmer on slow moving roads.
Plus it has encouraged me to either use public transport more, or just drive to a park-and-ride a mile or three out, and run the rest - facilities permitting of course.
Switch to a motorbike, then you can experience righteous anger at the handful of drivers slowing down hundreds of bikes and people in buses.
Funnily enough, I’m planning on getting my licence at some point.
I’ve no interest in motorbikes, I would just love to learn how to ride one safely.
I understood them as expensive toys, like an old Italian project car that’s fun to tool around in in nice weather, but when you need to get to work, you drive your car, but experiencing its role in SEA completely change my perspective. They can be cheap, boring, functional machines, with a suprisingly high capacity. that even a dog can perform basic maintenance on and keep running for decades, that work just fine in rain.
Good shout.
I live fairly rurally and the roads/drivers don’t really lend themselves to new riders.
I think if I lived in a big town or city though, I’d absolutely pick up a chicken chaser and rattle about short distances on one, they seem to be perfect for that sort of use case.
Plus, not that I’m a huge fan of tobacco advertising, bikes in the Rothmans livery look absolutely stunning to me.
Yeah that was a through the matrix moment for me too.
“No John, YOU are the traffic!”
And then John was traffic
Traffic John is what they called him.
I still lose it when I finally get to the front of the jam, and the only reason for said jam is because everyone is stopping to look at an accident on the OTHER SIDE OF THE HIGHWAY.
Yeah, it’s frustrating.
I’m not entirely sure what the rubberneckers want to see either. “Oh look, someone critically injured next to someone who is likely deceased”, because that isn’t a day ruiner at the best of times.
Odd.
It’s all a mad rush of people trying to get to where they don’t want to be as fast as possible
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/9/4278
TLDR: modeling traffic as a gas leads to fairly accurate predictions. If that doesnt mean anything to you, here’s a decent visualization of how gasses move around in a system. In this analogy, each of the gas particles models a car on the road. https://youtu.be/Hr5Baj3lXFA
slow speeds cause accidents, not speed, it it the sudden stop, the cause of some inbred driver
It’s usually a complex crowd effect created by many participants trying to maneuver among each other in slightly disperate ways.
In Portland OR, it really is because some dingbat slowed down to 20 MPH on the interstate for literally no fucking reason at all.
Taking I-5 into Vancouver from Portland is always horrific. Once you get over the bridge it always clears right up! A big part of that is all the on ramps. There’s so many of them! So everybody is having to make way every 10 feet for someone merging in.
It’s horrendous.
Yeah they could probably stand to lose the more southern of the two ramp sets at Delta Park, feels very extra and overall unhelpful (And I say this as someone who uses that ramp when headed north). Of course ODOT’s solution, beyond replacing the bridge, is to widen I-5 south of the bridge - Which anyone with a brain and 50 years of highway traffic studies can tell us would directly contribute to worsening the problem.
Often they do this because their car is barely limping along and they are trying to make it to the next exit.
This driver is distinct from that driver. We definitely have those too, and they have my sympathies. 10 seconds of engine death vs 10 seconds of brain death.
3 fucking seconds
The answer is a simple 3 second gap.
That’s it, just 3-mississippi (or 3-onethousand) seconds behind the car in front of you and most of the avoidable jams go away.
Except the person next to you or behind you gets frustrated and cuts you off and you have to hit the brakes and create a traffic pulse.
Well yes, society functions only with cooperation. Uncivil behaviour ends with violence and dismay.
However 3s usually allows for slow adjustments which alleviate caterpillaring.
If you do that, someone will move into the gap. If someone moves into the gap you can slow down to make another gap to them, but then someone else will drive into that gap. I don’t know of any major city where you can maintain a 3 second gap during rush hour.
Even worse, if you ever brake to try to create a gap, you’re likely to cause a traffic jam behind you.
Sure, if everybody did follow the suggestion and allowed a 3 second gap you wouldn’t have traffic jams, but that’s just not human nature, apparently.
You’re totally right. It’s a social/culture issue. You doing this on your own isn’t going to do shit. Everyone has to miraculously decide to come together to solve the problem with no one taking advantage. It’s the same reason we can’t do anything about climate change.
At least with climate change, your actions can make things slightly better. It’s not enough to be measurable if only one person does it, but if it’s a tiny pressure in the right direction. But, if you drive in a way that’s too different from how other people drive, you can actually make traffic worse or more dangerous.
You attribute an uneducated, uncivil approach to human nature, but I have been in human queues around the world, and they vary hugely based on cultural and social differences.
What you think is human nature seems to actually be driving culture in your region.
Yesterday I had a swasticar driver actually let me in on a disorderly merge. I was amazed, it was a first. Clue: nothing about Hondas changes people to be better. Tesla and BMW drivers are just shittier at sharing. This is culturally allowed.
Teach people to drive on the right lane unless they want to overtake somebody. Whoever overtakes you on the left won’t drive into the gap because they also want to overtake whoever is driving in front of you.
It’s too late to teach the entire population how to drive differently now.
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It happens when people tailgate. They over react and it causes an according effect.
Or when people drive too aggressively and cut someone off, causing the person being cut off to slam on their brake.
Nope that’s just a negative picture of a guy
Iirc, the answer is to have someone drive slowly and let other cars pass. It creates a buffer zone that regulates the flow back to normal pace. Or at least that’s what I remember from New Scientist’s video from like a decade ago.
I used to just idle when traffic moved. Slowed down way before i was even close to the car ahead. Played a game where i was trying to move at a constant speed or max fuel econ. Much less stressful to always be moving than gas/brake every 10s, even if you’re moving 5mph.
Really helps to look 3-4 cars ahead for brake lights.
not slowly, just leave room
CGP grey did a video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE
Basically one car breaking too much will make the following brake even more and so on until one stops and there’s a jam. There is no clear reason like a road blockage or an accident, just compounding slow down.
Basically one car breaking too much will make the following brake
If the car in front of me started breaking, I’d definitely get out of the way.
It’s the people not zipper merging correctly. You have idiots entering that are not up to speed and you have idiots breaking for the idiots not up to speed.
On ramps should be required to have their lane not end abruptly which causes the panic. The on ram should continue for at least a 1/4 mile.
idiots breaking
Adding to this, more collector-distributor roads that parallel the highway on both sides to reduce the weaving of people entering and exiting.
This is also why I hate cloverleaf highway intersections, the merge period is way too short and the speed delta can be high.
Just one more road bro it will fix traffic
Cars cause traffic. Cars changing lanes causes traffic. Cars merging causes traffic. Only solution, get rid of the cars and the system built to cater to them.
This is the correct answer. There isn’t a city on earth that has fixed congestion by building for more cars. It’s the places that build for trains and bikes that are best for driving, ironically.
It always comes to a point where the only way to improve traffic is to flatten the buildings people drive to, defeating the purpose.
And then you have to rebuild them farther away, creating even more traffic!
people not zipper merging correctly
Zipper merging is more complicated than driving straight forward and requires both lanes to slow down significantly relative to the cars in front and behind them.
The biggest issue with zipper merging is humans need to not be selfish for it to work. Its very efficient when moving well and everyone is in turn, as soon as 1 asshole sneaks in or prevents a merge, it causes the entire flow to stop.
The biggest issue with zipper merging is humans need to not be selfish for it to work.
The biggest issue is that humans need to be aware of all the cars around them. That means using side and rear mirrors, leaving appropriate space for larger vehicles, keeping track of your place in the line, and - also, yes, not being selfish.
Its very efficient when moving well
If you’ve ever been alongside a semi during a zipper merge, you’d know that’s not true. Their visibility is limited and the vehicle is huge, so they have to move at a glacial pace to complete the merge. Then the people in the leading/trailing positions need to open up a much larger gap than with a traditional car, complicated by the fact that they may not know exactly how big the truck they’re letting in is. And heaven help if there’s something hanging off the back of the vehicle. That’s scary, so it causes nervous drivers to try and get away from the rear of the larger vehicle, which further snarls the traffic.
Like, as a procedure executed by a machine with perfect information of all elements involved, its efficient. As a game theory exercise between individual drivers of different skill and temperament, riding in vehicles of varying sizes, on a road with obstructions and other potential hazards, it is decidedly not efficient.
The best flowing highways I’ve ever seen were ones where the on ramp didn’t end, but became the off ramp for the next exit. Obviously you can’t have that everywhere, but it’s basically a free flow lane that gives time for adjustment. I’ve also seen on ramps (older ones) that aren’t much more than a turn lane, and dangerous if you don’t know the area and traffic patterns.
My area kinda has this except the on ramp ends quickly merging into the right lane, then the off ramp starts almost immediately after. It makes traffic worse as cars trying to get on cannot merge effectively because cars want to be in that lane to exit. I find the best flow is having the off ramp before the on ramp, which minimizes right lane conflicts.
The issue with this style of lane design is it basically doubles the amount of lane changes that lane experiences, which can make it the most dangerous possible space if exits are close together. I’ve lived around Dallas. It’s scary.
I’ve literally seen a test with 4 cars driving around a circle, and they tell the drivers, “go at a consistent speed and maintain the distance in front of you” and after 5 minutes they’re all bunched up on one side of the circle. No amount of zipper merging and nice ramps will fix this.
