I’ve been watching traffic patterns for a while… Pretty much since I started driving.
I’ve wanted to answer the question of why does traffic get so bad sometimes?
The best analysis I can give from all of my observations is… People SUCK at merging. They don’t give space, they try to race to the “front” in lanes that are closing… Nobody actually knows how to zipper merge properly.
Listen, there’s basically two things you need to successfully zipper merge:
- Find an opening where you can fit into
- Match pace with the traffic you will be merging into.
For anyone in a lane that’s being merged into: make space for merging traffic.
I know legally, that the driver entering the lane will have to find space to merge into, and the drivers in the lane where others are merging into, don’t have a legal requirement to provide space, but by being a dickhead about it, you’re actively choosing to make things worse for everyone. Just give some space. It’s really not hard.
Everyone is more interested in getting somewhere fast, rather than doing things efficiently, in collaboration with fellow road users… So, when someone inevitably gets cut off by someone who simply must be in front, and they have to slow down, it takes a lot of time for the impact from that showdown, to be recovered by traffic behind the offender.
But trying to re-educate millions, if not billions of drivers to not be horrible at merging, isn’t something that’s realistically going to happen.
Whenever you hear about “congestion” slowdowns, this seems to be the cause just about every time.
I can actively see this on some highways near me, they have an exit on one stretch of highway through a fairly large city, every mile. I can almost time it for when we get to an exit, vs when we get to an on-ramp, simply by when we slow down or speed up, exclusively due to this phenomenon.
Crashes and wrecks are a whole other issue. Between everyone being shit at merging, all the goddamned rubberneckers, and people making generally idiotic choices to change lanes when they have no idea what is going on… We’re fucked.
I don’t hate traffic because it’s slow. I hate traffic because it’s entirely a product of people being stupid.
There’s more to it than that - there’s a lot of research involved. Other factors involve:
- Nobody does anything at the exact same time.
- What’s a turn signal
- I’m the main character!
- Hold on my phone’s ringing
- I’m getting in front of you if it kills you!
- Shit I’m gonna be 1 minute late for work!
- Fuck you in particular!
- One snowflake fell, time to panic!
- ALL the snowflakes fell but who cares I’ve got 4wd!
- Fuck this traffic, I’m taking the shoulder!
- CRASH
- Oh shit a cop everybody slow down.
- And more!
Chief offender is the cascade effect. Basically, there is a minimum convenient distance one can follow another at a given speed in given conditions. If thee guy in front of them does anything but keep going, they should be able to deal with it without slamming on the brakes.
But if people follow more closely than that, especially because the traffic volume increases, then when car A slams on their breaks, so do cars B, C, D, E, etc. then because everyone’s reaction speeds are marginally different, by the time you get to car F, everyone’s come to a hard stop, while car A goes on, oblivious that they created a traffic jam that may or may not have been inevitable.
Yea that cascade effect is huge. If everyone does what they’re supposed to you really shouldn’t need brakes on the highway much. Better to move continuously at a slow pace than tailgate and have to stop and go. It takes a second or two to actually move from a stop and that adds up over hundreds of cars when you add in the delay for everyone’s reaction time.
I agree with the cascade effect, it’s literally the reason why bad driving compounds into a traffic jam.
The thing is, if you leave sufficient following distance, someone is going to take it as an invitation to merge, so people in general, wanting to be in front, tend to follow more closely, so nobody else can get in front of them and push them further back in traffic.
So they follow too closely, someone brakes, and cascade of failure. Why they brake? Lots of stupid shit, often because someone entering the lane of traffic in front decided they’re getting in front of someone else even if it kills everyone, then brakes, and cascade… The cycle continues.
It becomes much harder to zipper merge, when there is a red light ~500m ahead and said 500m is almost full.
I also hate it when I am waiting at a red light and someone nearby suggests me to just skip the light, because I won’t get a fine (bicycle). I feel like people taking a test for the license (and renewing their license) should be reminded that the reason traffic laws exist is to prevent traffic jams and accidents.
Anyone suggesting you should skip a light because you’re on a bike, is not someone you want to listen to.
Stay safe out there.
I’ve had the same fascination!
A video I really enjoyed was a simplified experiment where they had some cars drive around in a closed loop - a single lane circle.
Traffic jams still inevitably somehow popped up, suggesting that we’re simply bad drivers haha. Higher level autonomous cars cannot come fast enough.
