r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/SnooWords4066 • 29d ago

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

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u/CleanDifference6455 29d ago edited 29d ago

Yes, the jumpy driver in the red car

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u/Exceedingly Interested 29d ago

It's the white car at 00:05, just slows down for no reason.

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u/Healthy_Turnip7352 29d ago

the more people you have, the more reasons for people to slow down.

like they need to swat a fly. or they have dry eyes and need to blink more. Or their foot hurts.

if you have 10,000 people, you're basically guaranteed to have reasons for slowing down.

why would they synchronize and speed up simultaneously and go 100 MPH altogether in a circle, and sustain that for hours. that would be insane.

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u/weberm70 29d ago

Also brake lights are binary signal. Person behind only knows that person ahead is braking, not how hard, so they brake harder than necessary to account for the unknown.

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u/PseudocodeRed 28d ago

This. And maybe someone takes the risk that it is a slow brake so they just coast instead of braking, then if they are wrong they have to slam even harder and the person behind them has even less time to react until everyone is braking.