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When Nerds Attack... Traffic!
I dunno. I think this guy is onto something. Driving a standard transmission in Virginia's legendary highway treacle fairly forces you to create large gaps ahead. I've found there are two real problems to this strategy: 1) once the gap reaches a certain size, the adjacent lanes "collapse" into the space, like waves of surf, and 2) psychopaths behind you flip their sh*t when they see you letting traffic "get away", and try to punt you along faster. Still, I think there's likely something to all this.
The article also ignores an even simpler explanation for why traffic problems happen on unobstructed roads... because cars are solid objects that take up space, and thus a given stretch of road can only have so many on it before it becomes as effectively impassible as if there was a fifty car pileup in the middle of the road. I'm pretty sure having too many cars on too little road is a greater source of these "phantom wrecks" that propogate through traffic in waves, as it also explains why that scientific study you linked a month ago showed that driving like a jackass actually improved traffic flow, while driving extra-cautiously (as this article recommends) reduced it. Tailgaters, as long as they don't actually cause a wreck, get their cars into smaller spaces and thus more cars move off the roads faster than leaving extra distance (effectively driving in a way to take up MORE space than usual).
Posted by: Tatterdemalian on August 27, 2009 05:10 PM