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In order for everyone to just freaking go, their cars would have to be attached somehow.
I wonder if anyone’s ever thought of linking a bunch of cars together so they can all stop and go simultaneously. And hey, since the cars are attached and all need to go to the same place, we can build a track instead of using high maintenance rubber on pavement and-
oop, we invented trains
Some sort of linked car-train lane that your car could use self-driving software to enter and leave would be an interesting concept. Like HOV but everyone is linked at the same speed.
Interesting in concept i guess, but orders of magnitude less efficient than a train.
This is trains but worse. The HOV lane also does not do much for traffic. It’s slightly less miserable to sit through a traffic jam at times, but often is similar speed wise to a regular lane.
Source: myself, driving in and around LA
And hey, since the cars are attached and all need to go to the same place
And voila, you just invented road networks again
And this is the magical part where we recognize that both can exist
There is nothing more American than being in traffic. You’re never more in touch with a systemic failure, yet we blame it on the choices of individual drivers, all the while unaware that we’re part of the problem.
It’s a little of column a and a little of column b. When I’m driving and some absolute piece of garbage is riding directly next to the car to their right, I equate them to a blood clot, which is funny, because they also make me feel like having an aneurysm. I also don’t forgive the driver on the right, because they are more than capable of allowing a space for other drivers to pass.
The absolute lack of awareness on the road is startling. I swear to God, people are looking through straws and their neck doesn’t move.
Building extra lanes, though, does not solve the problem.
Just ONE car can reduce traffic jams. Try it: leave enough buffer such that when the car in front of you stops, you almost reach their bumper at like 5 MPH but never stop b/c it’s time for them to move again. The guy behind you may never actually stop too.
So you had all these stoppers in front of you, and several cars not stopping behind you.
Enough people do this, and there’s no more stop & go. Just cruise 5mph the whole time (not 10, 0, 10, 0, 10, 0, which sucks).
Tried it. Now I’m stopped bumper to bumper with the guy who cut me off to cram his truck into the buffer I left. What’s the next step?
Not sure what the problem is. Keep doing it.
This is how I operate in most traffic jams, since I only own manual cars & it’s much easier on my leg.
I genuinely don’t even remember any specific scenarios where somebody merging in caused me to have to come to a full stop (where I wouldn’t have had to stop if they didn’t merge). Not saying it never happened, but it was so rare and unnotable that I don’t remember.
I do live in the northeast US, so maybe that has something to do with it, but I don’t usually feel like I spend meaningfully more time in traffic because I let a few people in front of me.
Bonus benefit: my life is measurably better since I stopped getting pissed about people being in front of me. Road rage had such a broad impact on me, even after I got out of the car.
stopped getting pissed about people being in front of me
The world would instantly be a better place if all the mouth-breathers in it could figure this out simultaneously. Wow, you’re pissed off at someone being “in front” of you. That’s because there’s totally an Earth-shakingly significant difference between having 9,784,326 cars in front of you vs. 9,784,325.
Keep doing it.
For you & @[email protected]:
🏅
Appreciate the affirmation. I’ve long theorized and experimented, glad to have real hoomans give nods.
Honest answer involves deep breaths (at least as one first adopts the method), chuckling at one’s favorite podcast, and recreating the buffer.
On certain roads, monkey see monkey do and eventually folks behind you kinda copy you and there’s a chance fewer and fewer folks will be cutting you off. Notice this most on the longest trips. Perhaps they’re not copying you, btw, rather the most aggressive drivers continually pass you until a small cohort of Big Spacers remain behind you. If some of these Space-Not-Racers are in front and around you too, aggressive drivers passing are passing without cutting you off as much - they have enough space to jam themselves into the bumper of the car in front of you.
Kinda funny going around a curve and seeing a hundred cars bumper to bumper ahead, then checking mirrors to see safe following distances :) (oh yeah this style is safer too not just more efficient!)
Can require some SERIOUS brain hacking. How mad would we be if someone cut in front of us at the grocery store? We’d go butts2nuts in a blink. Gotta just, like, flowww mannnn
I leave a gap between me and the driver in front of me. Rarely does anyone pull into that space. They usually are in the lane that gets them where they need to go
Just one train can reduce traffic jams much more, imagine a bunch if them in different sizes, speeds and even underground some of them.
I learned this technique – we called it “cutting off the head of the snake”.
Traffic moves like water, and becoming fluid and just rolling sometimes can kill traffic completely, I was on a stretch of bright red (5-10 mph) that began moving at 55 MPH after patiently rolling – there was no actual reason for the traffic jam.
Driving stick, I would do this all the time. In fact, I’d do it in the left lane, which I would never do, but for the fact all of the lanes are just constant stop and go. I’d leave massive buffers, 20-30 cars, and just cruise 5-10mph, and never stop. I just don’t understand why anyone wants to use their brakes at all, I hate using my brakes. I’d rather just coast in perpetuity than feel inertia in any direction.
All it takes is one guy behind you checking his phone, getting distracted so he gets cut up to create another stop start system about 5 cars back.
You’re vision of the traffic jam is a fragment of the entire pie.
Will ask the same of you as here :)
From above the whole thing looks like an accordion. Drivers who tailgate tend to overreact when they see brake lights 50 feet in front of them, compound this by the guy tailgating them and so on. Leave a buffer to absorb this and it smooths out
Great video but it doesn’t show the accordion effect. This one shows it though it’s far less entertaining https://youtu.be/6ZC9h8jgSj4?si=ODxg0a_tkPXu9mR5
Thanks, had not seen it so clearly.
When I do this, I hear horns behind me, telling me to stick it into the car in the front, which is clearly stopped on a red light counting down from 20s.
You’re not in traffic, you are traffic
Yeah but I’m trying to GO smoothly and courteously. Somewhere up ahead someone (or many someones) is stopping or merging badly or doing something else stupid to create these phantom traffic jams.
It takes but an idiot. And 1/10 people on the road are idiots. So that’s an idiot every 100m while commuting. There’s no surprise.
At least 1/10 of them are idiots.
also, very respectfully to my mom and grandpa (RIP) old people have to stop driving. My mom is 65 and in pretty good shape so she refuses to stoo driving. She only have 2 road modes: Maniac or Tourtle. She’ll alone create a standstill in a highway OR she’ll almosr kill herself and everyone else on the road. No midle ground
I will add serious distance to a journey in order to avoid a jam. I will wake at an inhumane hour to avoid traffic. I know it’s irrational but sitting in traffic is the worst. My life was so easy when I cycled to work. Literally zero traffic jams for twelve years. Every journey to and from home was fifteen minutes.
I feel like HOV lanes are more trouble than they’re worth because they disrupt traffic flow since people need to slow down when the HOV drivers enter/exit
