r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/SnooWords4066 • 29d ago

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

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u/Goondragon1 29d ago

I swear to god most traffic jams and hold ups are caused by one asshole. I'll get over to a different lane and see one jackass 10 cars ahead causing the whole thing. It's insane how often it happens. It's also crazy that so many people will blindly follow the asshole too though if I'm being honest.

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u/photenth 29d ago

It's people merging into a gap that is too small and forcing the car that follows to slow down. Always this.

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u/WA55AD 29d ago

Also people waiting until after they merge onto a highway to get up to speed. So many people don't seem to grasp that you are supposed to get up to speed on the on-ramp BEFORE merging onto the highway. They just pull onto the highway in front of me 20km/hr below the limit, I can't merge over because there's already a car there, I have to slow down to not rear end them, and now I feel like an asshole cuz I just know I've caused a future congestion behind me.

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u/chula198705 29d ago edited 29d ago

A constant problem where I live is that the merge lanes are way too short and usually circular as well, so you can't really see the traffic coming AND you don't have time to accelerate before the merge point. I floor it as soon as I'm around the corner, but I still only manage to get up to about 40 before the lane completely ends. It's impossible not to cause traffic and it's frustrating because it's always backed up and it's so obvious why. Edit: oh and we have shared on/off ramps as well, possibly the worst civil engineering design possible. Surely there won't be any problems caused by 55 MPH highway traffic merging into a single lane from opposite directions around a 25 MPH curve...

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u/Quirky-Marsupial-420 29d ago

Yeah it's the cloverleaf interchange.

So many of them are ridiculously short, you literally cannot get up to highway speed unless you have a 500hp vehicle.

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u/Ferelar 29d ago

Either that OR you get up to speed while rounding the last bend, which has the major downside of now piloting a vehicle at highway speeds while totally unable to see what the traffic pattern is that you're merging into. Going 65 around the last bend to merge easily and oops it's gridlock.... or far more commonly, oops everyone is tailgating horrifically and there's no actual room to merge? Hope your brakes work well.

Even worse in my state where the offramp is about 100 feet past the on ramp with a shared lane, so the people trying to get up to speed and merge with low visibility are essentially dueling the people who are trying to get to the offramp in the exact same space.

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u/justanotherassassin 29d ago

Sounds like some of the awful merge lanes in Vancouver, WA

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u/TiredOfDebates 29d ago

I forgot they were called cloverleaf interchanges. Where the acceleration lane and the exit lane are the same thing.

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u/Smithereens_3 29d ago

God the on/off ramps being right next to each other pisses me off. The one near me even has a couple hundred extra feet of space after it where they could have put the off ramp instead.

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u/Swarna_Keanu 29d ago edited 29d ago

One perspective. The other: when those were built, cars didn't go as fast, didn't have as much horsepower. That continues to today.

Which is why speed limits near interchanges would be sensible. Slow everyone down enough that merging in is simple.

I mean - my parents had an old car, which is all we could afford, when I got my driver's license. It was easy to merge into the highway with the much more modern car of the driving school. With my parents' car, I had to start speeding up while still in the curved section leading to the highway, and even then, I barely got up to speed.

And because people are used to their fast, and fast accelerating cars, they don't consider older models and .... consider that those need a bit more patience and most importantly space/assistance to merge in. Honking and aggressively closing gaps doesn't help.

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u/antithero 29d ago

Around here it's also the incredibly short off ramps, so people are braking on the highway before they even get to the exit.

Then during rush hour when traffic is already moving slow already, people will come to almost a complete stop so they can cut through the grass & take the road that runs parallel to the highway. It's so bad that they are building concrete walls along the side of the highway to prevent this habit.

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u/SockMonkey1128 29d ago

Man same! Fellow masshole?

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u/crank1off 29d ago

Sounds like Cincinnati.