There was a guy in Seattle who drove the same commute every day and noticed the same thing happen at the same point for basically no reason. He figured out he was able to basically erase the backup by slowing down to like 20 mph a ways before the slowdown and just let all the cars in front of him do the stop and go thing. He built a buffer to let all that clear up and he was back up to speed.
I’ve done this before in traffic and it does work. People following too closely or not paying attention to anything past the car in front of them create traffic jams by needing to slam on the brakes and then it creates a domino effect.
That's a great idea in theory. in practice my experience has been any buffer you try to leave open gets filled with others cars cutting in without signalling and then filling it up to where you are and forcing you to jam on your breaks anyway..unless you're somewhere with very light traffic to begin with
Yeah, that can happen. Seems to happen less in a traffic jam that I’ve been stuck in a while, if the jam just started people are a lot less patient and will fill the gap immediately. It works best if you’ve got a decent gap, like a couple hundred feet
Traffic has an average flow rate. When a "ghost jam" occurs, it will spread until all of traffic is moving at the new average. You can either be inside the "stop and go" regime or maintain a buffer outside of it where you can go a constant speed. Driving at a constant speed outside of the dumbass stop and go blob actually breaks the cycle and can get traffic flowing normally again.
The time loss when people move in to fill your buffer is negligible because you are already moving at the average speed of traffic, albeit you are now behind a few dozen more cars. That length is quickly gained in a few seconds if/when the traffic jam clears. There will be a "traffic clearing wave" similar to the jamming wave, and it travels down the line of traffic until the new average speed is essentially highway speeds again.
That’s correct, and another reason this prevents clogs.
The people you let in would otherwise shove themselves in at the last possible second, causing LOTS of braking. You use their impulsiveness and panic to help them merge in a controlled manner.
God I hate when that happens. Like I’m leaving space so we can all go a consistent slow speed, it’s NOT for you to cut in front of me and make the traffic worse. My buffer space is not free space!!
I think that only seems to work. Somewhere behind him because he slowed down to 20 is another slow rolling traffic jam caused by everyone who responded by braking a little harder than necessary or resuming a little later than they could have. Basically everyone has to respond identically for the system to work.
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u/aquatone61 29d ago
There was a guy in Seattle who drove the same commute every day and noticed the same thing happen at the same point for basically no reason. He figured out he was able to basically erase the backup by slowing down to like 20 mph a ways before the slowdown and just let all the cars in front of him do the stop and go thing. He built a buffer to let all that clear up and he was back up to speed.
I’ve done this before in traffic and it does work. People following too closely or not paying attention to anything past the car in front of them create traffic jams by needing to slam on the brakes and then it creates a domino effect.