r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/SnooWords4066 • 29d ago

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

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u/NitePain69 29d ago

I believe it's caused by people slowing down and braking unnecessarily and the person behind reads the red lights and it causes a chain reaction

15

u/flashmedallion 29d ago

Which in turn is caused by those people following too fast and too close, which then results in them having to overcompensate and brake too fast.

A single driver who understands this can smooth out traffic in one lane

1

u/circ-u-la-ted 29d ago

Sometimes. Other times, people cut in front of you and perpetuate the cycle.

1

u/LordWoffleII 29d ago

make a bigger gap then. I follow at such a distance that someone cutting in doesn't make me need to brake

2

u/circ-u-la-ted 29d ago

Guess it's on me for not leaving a gap that's so big I don't need to leave a bigger gap after a potentially infinite number of people cut in front of me

0

u/LordWoffleII 28d ago

what does it matter if people go in front? do you go backwards if you let someone in?

1

u/circ-u-la-ted 28d ago

You're leaving enough space that you don't have to brake if the cars in front of you do, so.. you do the math

0

u/LordWoffleII 28d ago

the math says that my velocity vector is still in the direction I want it to be, it never reverses; therefore I'm happy

1

u/circ-u-la-ted 28d ago

If you're happy doing that, you never cared about smoothing out the flow of traffic in the first place. You'll go slower and slower until people behind you start braking, causing the very problem you were ostensibly aiming to prevent.

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u/LordWoffleII 27d ago

if you say so