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Mathematicians Solve the Mystery of Traffic Jams
mlimber writes "Do you ever find yourself in a traffic jam, thinking, 'Man, there must be a bad accident up ahead,' but as you plod along you see no evidence of any crash? Some mathematicians have solved the mystery by developing a mathematical model that shows how one driver hitting the brakes a little too hard can cascade into a backup miles behind. The mathematicians' future research will investigate how automatic braking systems may alleviate the problem."
Not necessarily stupidity. if I can see past the driver in front of me, I can make a better decision. I can see that he is simply adjusting speed to allow for a more reasonable space between him and the car in front. If I am stuck behind an SUV in my car, then I am not sure if his tap on the brake is about to turn into a full fledged stomp of the brakes, and I have to adjust, and possible harder that I need to. This becomes a cascading event.
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Another cause for bad traffic is the ridiculously easy driving test we have in the States. Couple that with law-enforcement only ticketing speeders instead of bad drivers in general, and you get the traffic we have in most of our cities. I also hate how all accidents are chalked up to "failure to control speed", which makes it sound as if speeding were the main cause of all accidents. In reality, failure-to-yield is overwhelmingly the #1 cause of collision accidents, not speed. But the revenue hungry cops would rather sit on their motorcycles with radar guns than actually pull people over for changing 5 lanes at once, or cutting off other drivers by pulling out in front of them and then NOT accelating.
Not to mention, hell will freeze over before they ever ticket a slow driver in the left lane.
Yeah, but when you start giving enough room between you and the car ahead, an idiot besides you speeds up and steals your place
Conclusion: Traffic jams are caused by idiots.
Apparently, a lot of people think that their vehicles only have "stop" and "go" modes, without multiple different levels of coasting and slowing down without the brakes for those minor adjustments. I'll take my car out of overdrive quite often to adjust just a bit, rather than hitting the brakes needlessly. That way when I hit my brakes, I actually mean it. Brake lights = slowing down non-trivially. I wish more people did that.
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Yeah, but when you start giving enough room between you and the car ahead, an idiot besides you speeds up and steals your place
Conclusion: Traffic jams are caused by idiots. Well of course, that's because it's a race, they HAVE to be in front of you, they HAVE to get to the next red light before you.
You can't take the sky from me...
I tend to do this during heavy traffic. I drive a manual, and shifting in and out of gear over and over gets old real fast. The trick is just to not care. It's hard, I know. Give yourself more than 2 seconds. I tend to go by car lengths, just because traffic conditions vary. In slow traffic (5-25 mph) I'll try to maintain a 10-car-length space or so. This doesn't mean I'm constantly braking and accelerating; if I wanted to do that, I'd just tailgate the guy in front of me like everyone else. If someone cuts in in front of you, let them. They're probably just going to speed up and slam on their brakes when they get to the car in front of you. You can slightly adjust your speed by releasing the gas pedal a little to maintain your space. There's no real hurry -- you have 9 car lengths worth of time to do this. If traffic is heavy and slow enough, you end up with people to the right and left (and behind) you who aren't "cheaters," and people tend to stop cutting in front of you so much. But even if they do, the magic phrase is: "who cares?"
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.