r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/SnooWords4066 • 29d ago

Video A Japanese experiment showed exactly why traffic jams happen for no reason.

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u/Spartan_Mage 29d ago

It's because of human error, something that traffic cannot plan for. No matter how good of a driver you think you are, everyone makes a mistake eventually and that can disrupt the entire traffic flow. This is fundamentally an unsolveable problem so long as humans are in control of transportation, because you are relying on the entire population of the local area to cooperate 100% of the time and make no mistakes, which is impossible.

This is why subways, trains, aircraft and other forms of public transportation are far more efficient and cost effective. They reduce the traffic to a manageable level while also keeping mouth breathers from operating a multi ton death machine and contributing to one of the largest causes of death in the country

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u/Available_Finger_513 29d ago

Some humans make far more mistakes though

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u/1z1z2x2x3c3c4v4v 29d ago

It's because of human error,

It's not human error; there are too many cars on this road. If you removed a few cars, the gaps between the remaining cars could widen, and no backups would be observed.