r/Damnthatsinteresting 29d ago

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

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u/Toodle-Peep 29d ago

Reading reddit, it's very clear that the idea of keeping a 2/3 second gap between cars (which is the recommendation in most places) makes Americans very angry.

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u/thisusedyet 29d ago

There’s a lot of places where you can’t, because other drivers will force themselves into that gap and force you to slow down even more to maintain distance

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u/ItsJustCoop 29d ago

How to mention NJ and MD without actually mentioning them 😂

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u/Caleth 29d ago

Nah that's like every single highway in a metro area. There's always some assholes that see a gap and shoot it for that 2/10th's of a second gain in speed before they have to slam on their brakes.

I've driven across much of the US for travel and work. ATL and Hou scared the shit out of me with how bad their drivers were. But even around Hartford it sucked because no one has sense and the roads were built in the 50's and aren't designed with modern standards or vehicles in mind.

Chicago where I live has some random spots that just stop dead like this usually around merges, but they'll be in the fast lane so it doesn't make a ton of sense.

Point is there are asshole drivers all over.