Make it make sense
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Only ever have to ask, my friend
Heres an overview shot of a traffic pulse.
One person brakes for no reason which leads to everyone else braking. The pulse travels despite there being nothing there. The longer it can take for someone to start up again also can delay the whole thing.
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.
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This is why I thought that maybe it would be good to have some kind of pacing cars, e.g. operated by traffic police? I.e. when you already know or can anticipate that there is a large jam building up, you bring in one pacing car on every lane at an appropriate low speed and everyone has to adjust, so the thing you mentioned won't happen.
Nah, cops being on the highway is one of the big causes of traffic. Everyone slows down to the speed limit when they come up on a cop and many are too timid to pass at all. This causes a huge brake wave and fucks everything up. It's why I don't think speed limits should even be a thing or should at least be adjusted because most highways are so low that just about everyone ignores them (and is not harmed doing so) until law enforcement appears. If people want to go slower that's fine but they need to keep right when they aren't passing and everyone needs to leave plenty of space in front of them so that traffic is permeable enough that people can get to their exit without causing brake waves and absorb the "shock" when it is necessary for someone to hit their brakes.
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This is why I thought that maybe it would be good to have some kind of pacing cars, e.g. operated by traffic police? I.e. when you already know or can anticipate that there is a large jam building up, you bring in one pacing car on every lane at an appropriate low speed and everyone has to adjust, so the thing you mentioned won't happen.
I feel like regular patrol cars might work like this already - who's going to blow past a cop driving down the road?
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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.
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.
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This is why I thought that maybe it would be good to have some kind of pacing cars, e.g. operated by traffic police? I.e. when you already know or can anticipate that there is a large jam building up, you bring in one pacing car on every lane at an appropriate low speed and everyone has to adjust, so the thing you mentioned won't happen.
This is about 2 decades old now but a bunch of people tried something sorta like a pacing car
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoETMCosULQ -
It may be "on them, not you", but if it keeps happening because of the way you're driving, then fundamentally it's on you.
The fact is, if someone drives too differently from other drivers they make things less safe for everyone. It doesn't matter that if everyone adopted their way of driving it would be safer. It's still the case that driving too differently endangers everyone else.
In some cases, leaving a 3 second gap is going to cause more dangerous conditions than it alleviates. That's especially true if you're really rigorous about that 3 second gap and noticeably slow down to create a new gap when someone merges in front of you.
You don't have to rigorously slow down though. Just ease it into existence. Its not a race. It might take a few seconds to replace that space, but thats fine. You don't even need to hit the brakes 95% of the time. Just go a mph or two slower and let it balloon out over time.
The person behind you can usually recognize that someone just whipped out in front of you and will give you some grace time to adjust.
And keep in mind, if someone is merging into your lane, then whatever lane they came from now has additional space, which lets those lanes work better. Its a win win.
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Californians te the worst drivers in the world because none of them understand this simple concept. Every day I’m driving, I give more than enough space in front of me for someone to cut me off and I don’t have to brake. It’s simple. However, I’m constantly getting people riding my ass. Switching around me. And being over all menaces just because I’m leaving a roper gap between myself and the car in front of me. It’s wild.
You think drivers from your <country/state/city> are bad? That's because you have never driven in my <country/state/city>
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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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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 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.
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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.
not slowly, just leave room
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I have adaptive cruise with a settable car length and increasing the gap length just makes the cars behind you act more deranged.
I've found the only setting that doesn't make everyone around me fly off the handle is the lowest (one car gap) setting.
I also drive in the diamond lane on long trips and typically have my upper speed limit set well above what the person in front of me is driving.
This is actually an argument for why these features should be mandatory. Traffic is caused by humans and their silly emotions. These types of self driving features with inter-communication would erase traffic jams.
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Californians te the worst drivers in the world because none of them understand this simple concept. Every day I’m driving, I give more than enough space in front of me for someone to cut me off and I don’t have to brake. It’s simple. However, I’m constantly getting people riding my ass. Switching around me. And being over all menaces just because I’m leaving a roper gap between myself and the car in front of me. It’s wild.
huh, they seem to get that concept on the highways i drive on. big state though, we could live ten hours apart from each other.
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I feel like regular patrol cars might work like this already - who's going to blow past a cop driving down the road?
me, because i know what speed they'll pull me over at and if they're doing 20 under that, who cares
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They called it "ghost jam" but man, i prefer blackberry jam.
marionberry or nothing
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In one of the Mission Impossible movies Tom Cruise is supposed to have a boring job no one will ask him about and the movie shows this by having the character talk about traffic patterns. I thought it was interesting information then and think it is interesting now.
Lmao I remember seeing this exact scene as a kid, thinking as he was talking "oh that sounds cool as fuck" and then only from how the scene played out realizing it was supposed to be a significantly boring concept
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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.
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This is why I thought that maybe it would be good to have some kind of pacing cars, e.g. operated by traffic police? I.e. when you already know or can anticipate that there is a large jam building up, you bring in one pacing car on every lane at an appropriate low speed and everyone has to adjust, so the thing you mentioned won't happen.
Or we could just build trains and other alternatives to cars, which would end up cheaper, faster, safer, environmentally friendly, ...but we have big oil.
(Sry, I had to)
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Hey I studied this in grad school for a bit, and it really is just "someone does some dumb shit which leads to a cascading wave of additional people doing dumb shit which propagates backwards for miles." Basically when the offered load is getting close to the maximum load, all it takes is one person aggressively changing lanes to throw that section of highway into gridlock, and it will remain that way until the total integrated traffic flux across that incident boundary again falls below the critical offered load inflection point.
Basically, pick a lane and just stay in it. Maintain proper following distance. Counterintuitively, the following distance should be for the speed you want to drive, so even in traffic it should be like 5+ car lengths even though you are going slow. This is because it reduces the offered load, and once that number falls below the critical point, speeds will increase again. Bumper to bumper traffic basically prevents that from happening because it dampens the ability for a "speedup" wave to propagate.
Of course this is all impossible for humans. All it takes is a few idiots to throw off the balance.
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That's also why the best way to relieve traffic is to go at a slow even pace without braking. Every time the someone in heavy traffic runs up the ass of another car and brakes hard, or swerves into the "faster" lane and make someone else brake to not hit them, they cause another brake wave. If you have a few cars intentionally just hanging back and cruising with a big enough gap between them and the cars jocking for position in traffic in front of them, then their brake waves do not propogate behind you and eventually traffic just picks up pace again.
Edit: side bonus, you still get there just as fast, but with a lot less stress fighting assholes for position (minus the ones who fly past you thinking you're the asshole for not riding someone else's bumper)
Right, if you think about the creation of traffic as a negative speed wave which causes compression, and traffic alleviation as a positive speed wave which requires rarefaction, then it becomes clear why traffic is so stubborn. When people are so bunched together, no positive speed wave can propagate. Which is why you literally get to to the point where the original idiot slammed on the brakes and the traffic magically disintegrates. If everyone stayed 5 car lengths apart in traffic, that alleviation would actually propagate backwards as fast as the initial congestion.
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Yeah, in theory it's great but every time I try it people just cut in front of me then slam on brakes causing me to have to brake then adjust then repeat ad nauseam. People suck.
Then leave another gap. There are finite idiots in the world, and you cannot actually go backwards.
