Make it make sense
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You're right of course, the reason traffic exists is because you, DancingBear, cannot be on every roadway in America at the same time.
Seriously dude, have you ever been in traffic? I'm not talking about a small slowdown on a one, two lane, or even four lane road. I'm talking about sitting on the 5 or the 101 in any of the multiple times it becomes a parking lot daily.
Manually maintaining a large gap in front of you is not solving that shit, and it's frankly ridiculous to suggest that it will.
Keep beating your straw man I guess
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You are incorrect. You are the cause of the traffic jam lol, literally.
If people pass quickly, then get out of the left lane, nobody needs to brake and start a compression wave
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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.
So basically: 1. Put people in public transport away from the steering wheel, 2) scale back cars use.
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So basically: 1. Put people in public transport away from the steering wheel, 2) scale back cars use.
Go back to fuckcars with the rhetoric.
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This is like saying you don’t know how a bottleneck works.
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Just one more road bro it will fix traffic
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Keep beating your straw man I guess
Do you also believe that only you can prevent forest fires? Or that we can recycle our way out of climate change?
Get real. Uncoordinated individual actions cannot solve systemic problems.
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I find it’s the speeders, tailgaters, and the infuriating few that can’t seem to manage to go at the prevailing speed that cause the waves in traffic. The rest is structural - merges, construction, lane reductions, etc. The aforementioned all cause the slowdowns because they move quickly, traffic tends to follow, and end up constantly hitting their brakes riding the ass of the slower traffic. That starts a wave that ends up with traffic stopping when density is high enough.
You can’t control others moving slower than you want, bitching about lane campers changes nothing, but managing a speed/spacing that allows little or no braking does wonders to keep things moving. If only people would bother to do so.
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Do you also believe that only you can prevent forest fires? Or that we can recycle our way out of climate change?
Get real. Uncoordinated individual actions cannot solve systemic problems.
In the case of traffic, keeping a larger following distance can quite literally solve the stop and go break waves that occur…
Trying to race ahead and get ahead by one car at a time makes the problem worse.
That’s all this is saying.
You can not solve the problem ahead of you, you can only affect the traffic behind you.
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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.
There was a really interesting MythBusters episode where they essentially replicate what you're talking about. Albeit with an "n" of 1 or 2 and a very small scale, but still interesting.
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I find it’s the speeders, tailgaters, and the infuriating few that can’t seem to manage to go at the prevailing speed that cause the waves in traffic. The rest is structural - merges, construction, lane reductions, etc. The aforementioned all cause the slowdowns because they move quickly, traffic tends to follow, and end up constantly hitting their brakes riding the ass of the slower traffic. That starts a wave that ends up with traffic stopping when density is high enough.
You can’t control others moving slower than you want, bitching about lane campers changes nothing, but managing a speed/spacing that allows little or no braking does wonders to keep things moving. If only people would bother to do so.
I think about this all the time while commuting. I yearn so much to teach the drivers this one simple trick!
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"Pick a lane and stay in it" leads to slow drivers blocking the left lane, no?
From a purely traffic load perspective, the whole "fast lane" thing doesn't make a huge difference, and the aggressive obsession with it is actually a big part of the psychology which creates traffic in the first place. Traffic capacity is generally optimized when everyone is traveling close to the same speed and has enough following distance to safely maintain that speed, which is why speed limits are set for the slowest road users. Just in general, speed does not increase road capacity beyond a certain fairly low limit because it requires dramatically increased following distance, or in the absence of such responsible behavior, it massively increases the frequency of traffic disruption.
The worst case is a few people traveling much faster than the slowest road users, as these few users both take up more space, and cause more disruption. The "fast lane" concept is rooted firmly in an unfortunate behavioral reality and has basically no real scientific basis beyond that. Even if you had perfect robot drivers with perfect reaction time and the ability to see far ahead of themselves, the critical capacity speed only increases slightly because the maximum stoping distance is still limited by rubber and asphalt.
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If people pass quickly, then get out of the left lane, nobody needs to brake and start a compression wave
So an entire third of the road is basically left empty so people can speed?
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From a purely traffic load perspective, the whole "fast lane" thing doesn't make a huge difference, and the aggressive obsession with it is actually a big part of the psychology which creates traffic in the first place. Traffic capacity is generally optimized when everyone is traveling close to the same speed and has enough following distance to safely maintain that speed, which is why speed limits are set for the slowest road users. Just in general, speed does not increase road capacity beyond a certain fairly low limit because it requires dramatically increased following distance, or in the absence of such responsible behavior, it massively increases the frequency of traffic disruption.
The worst case is a few people traveling much faster than the slowest road users, as these few users both take up more space, and cause more disruption. The "fast lane" concept is rooted firmly in an unfortunate behavioral reality and has basically no real scientific basis beyond that. Even if you had perfect robot drivers with perfect reaction time and the ability to see far ahead of themselves, the critical capacity speed only increases slightly because the maximum stoping distance is still limited by rubber and asphalt.
I’m a little confused about the mechanism of the speeders causing the disruption. Is it because when they cut in front of someone closely, it causes the driver to hit the brakes to make more room, thus triggering the chain reaction?
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There are phantom traffic jams where someone breaks hard and it ripples on for ages. You can see on YouTube.
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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.
Sad thing is its more than just a few idiots.
The idiots are the majority. So stupidly self absorbed they constantly screw themselves over trying to "get theirs".
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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.
The problem with that is people would still do the same stupid shit behind the pace cars which would just cause the same issues.
The only way traffic pace cars would work is with better fundamental training (and enforcement of that training [meaning cops would actually have to regularly ticket people for tailgating]).
Especially here in the usa there are hardly any barriers to getting/keeping your license.
There is a massive amount of drivers who either shouldn't be on the road at all or with heavy restrictions like not allowed to drive at night, not allowed on the highway, not allowed to drive certain classes of cars (kinda like other countries do for motorcycles because there is zero reason for any joe schmoe to just be able to legally get behind the wheel of something like a supercar on public roads)
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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.
When idiots ride my ass I slow down.
Im driving the speed limit in the right hand lane and you ride my ass - I let off the gas to the minimum speed (here its usually 45mph)
Im actively passing in the left lane and you ride my ass I let off the gas.
When the idots back off I speed back up. If they start riding me again I slow back down. After a few times of this they usually pull their heads out of their asses and back off/ properly change lanes.
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I find it’s the speeders, tailgaters, and the infuriating few that can’t seem to manage to go at the prevailing speed that cause the waves in traffic. The rest is structural - merges, construction, lane reductions, etc. The aforementioned all cause the slowdowns because they move quickly, traffic tends to follow, and end up constantly hitting their brakes riding the ass of the slower traffic. That starts a wave that ends up with traffic stopping when density is high enough.
You can’t control others moving slower than you want, bitching about lane campers changes nothing, but managing a speed/spacing that allows little or no braking does wonders to keep things moving. If only people would bother to do so.
I used to say "Speeding gets you nowhere, fast" but the irony is lost on anyone that does it.
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I’m a little confused about the mechanism of the speeders causing the disruption. Is it because when they cut in front of someone closely, it causes the driver to hit the brakes to make more room, thus triggering the chain reaction?
Thats a big part of it, yeah. Theres lots of really good comments about it in this thread.
