How to break up stop-and-go traffic.
Posted Dec 8, 2009, 12:16 AM UTC
113139
This is what I do all the time.. It seems like common sense.
17
Even more common sense if you drive a manual transmission. You have to do this to prevent constant shifting, which leads to a sore left calf.
12
Seriously. I nearly wrecked my knee on a sticky clutch on a Volvo. For a while I could barely walk when I was driving a lot. I'm a big believer in this type of driving.
3
Heh same, I hit two traffic jams on the way back to school after Thanksgiving; my knee was killing me by the end of it.
2
It is. I grew up in a town of 14,000 people where there was no such thing as traffic.
I moved to Houston and within the first 2 weeks of driving there I learned to do this. It's really hard to imagine people going months or years or even a lifetime without coming to this realization.
7
Most people are mentally challenged.
12
You know, this stuff should really be required in driver's ed. The whole social aspect of driving. Show the kids some videos. Usually it's the young kids who screw this up when you're trying to do this, having no clue.
6
No kidding, people react to brake lights not actual traffic conditions. All it takes is for one person to be patient and coast and traffic resets to easy flow.
Another thing that breaks it up real well is idle in a lane that merges because it ends for construction. It's too hard for most people to sit there and just stare at empty road in front of them, but once all the late mergers finally get in, traffic moves unrestricted again.
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1
Shit I just do this because I'm lazy as hell and I hate moving my foot to the brake pedal, also it helps break up the monotony of the commute home.
1
Basically, Drive like a thoughtful individual and everybody benefits.
16
Mind blown.
7
"And now I am the zen warrior that is going to shatter traffic jams..." This guy is awesome.
15
I do stuff like this all the time just out of pure philosophy that everybody should flow evenly. My girlfriend is completely opposite and find this to be totally loser like, I guess she's the type that could push and stop/go all her life without even trying a zen-approach.
She does not know what reddit is ;)
2
I do this all the time. I learned it as a school bus driver. Most commerical drivers know about this. It has a lot to do with being up above the traffic where you can see what's going on.
A few weeks ago I busted up a huge traffic jam in Taipei that was going nowhere till I got in there and put a spacer in. By the time I got to where the accident was the cops on the scene could tell what had happened by the way the flow had smoothed out and they gave me a big smile and a thumbs up for helping them out. My wife was amazed at how obvious it was that I had cured a traffic jam.
It also helps to drive a bus or a big truck because you get over that fear about the guy behind you honking and riding your tail. Fuck 'em. If they're stupid enough to rear-end you, it's going to be their fault.
15
When I was learning to drive, my instructor pointed out that a lot of lorry drivers leave gaps on the road, and that it makes great sense to do so too. I also installed a horn on a chain hanging from the rear view mirror, I wear caps I find on the side of the road, and I murder prostitutes.
4
Wait...how did you install a truck horn?
5
it's the elastic from my boxers, I just make the noise...
1
...and it can double as a prostitute strangler...I see where you're going with this.
/subscribe -newsletter
1
Yes, it's quite satisfying to know you're in the right when rear-ended by someone with no insurance. That definitely makes me feel superior while getting my car repaired. After the whiplash wears off.
0
Ok so you busted up the jam and made all the traffic go in front of you how? You rammed them with your bus? you went even slower than them? Please I drive the beltway everyday and you people are nothing but a bunch dimwits that can't realize you are making the traffic worse. Do you think that by sheer will power and superior intellect you willed the traffic away from in front of your vehicle?
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You apparently didn't understand the video. He's not driving any slower, he's just leaving a gap.
5
But people are constantly getting in front of him causing him to go even slower, this is a method to get there faster and make everyone else get there faster? I will need a mathematical proof.
-1
2+2=5
The context in which he's doing this does matter. He's not just arbitrarily sitting in the fast lane and trying to slow it down. In the video, you may have noticed that the lane he was in was splitting off from the main freeway. The reason it was slowing down was because everyone was pulling up to the front of the lane and sneaking in, forcing somebody in that lane to stop, thereby forcing everybody behind them to stop. If, instead of forcing everyone to stop, this guy leaves a gap for these people to merge into without him having to stop completely, he keeps traffic behind him moving constantly. It's common sense, dude.
2
I would love to be driving behind this guy.
11
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5
I would like to repeatedly thrust my penis in and out of his anal cavity.
5
Well...that was careful.
3
I tried this on the drive back to school from thanksgiving. It works well until the asshole on the cell phone behind me starts riding up your ass too close, not fully paying attention to the fact that I'm slowing down to maintain the average speed. Before you know it he gets too close slams the breaks and all my work is gone to shit.
11
Thats why they say the safest thing to do is move with the flow of traffic, whether you like the flow or not.
6
From what I saw, he didn't really keep up with the average speed of the car ahead of him and the gap usually grew in front. Think driving like that in the left-most lane isn't gonna cause effects behind you when cars need to pass you to the right? I would also argue that creating a gap motivates people to become, what he calls, "cheaters".
10
In a real traffic situation, which he wasn't in, people will always fill the gap in front of you which would force you to slow even more to create a new gap which means that you go slower and slower and slower until you have caused all the people behind you to slit their wrists and stab their eyes out.
12
This.
I appreciate his philosophical take on "how to be a better commuter" but then again there's a light rail line that runs that same route now and he could probably get out of his car and use public transit if he's really aggravated.
Most importantly this depends on the "merging" as cause of a traffic back-up. In most areas I've seen it is poorly designed exits with a light at the end are the real problem or, what is clearly not seen in this video, actual traffic congestion.
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7
Agreed, he is the rather aggravating "I'm so nice and considerate" holier than you driver that is really not all that great. Hint, if you slow down to let people merge, unless there is a traffic light going onto that on ramp, it will be a never ending flow of cars. The best thing to do if you can't move to a different lane is just maintain a constant rate of speed. Anybody merging should know how to fit in around you.
To be clear, yes it makes more sense to try to maintain a constant speed in stop and go traffic by not accelerating hard the second the car in front of you moves, but this guy takes it way too far. People will simply hop into another lane and pass him, which creates a host of other issues.
5
Well, if half the fucking drivers in the US could figure out that most stop and go traffic is caused because some asshat thinks that 1/2 a car length is proper distance at 45 MPH from the car in front of them we'd all be better off.
3
I'm kind of fat and ugly, but people don't even realize how important I am because I make the traffic flow!
Just kidding, we need a lot more people like him. Another interesting traffic phenomenon is that traffic will always almost always fill the road to capacity no matter how many lanes are built. This is because of traffic "shunting". The route becomes more desirable as capacity is increased, leading more and more drivers to take that route, until an equilibrium between route-attractiveness and headache is reached.
6
The ants call it pheromones.
1
You become Shakeela, queen of the lost city of ants. That's your palace. And that's your lover Artmad, but he's a drone so your love is forbidden!
1
This would work well until I got behind this guy. I would then create my own traffic waves by getting to within 6 inches of his back bumper and then braking until I was 1.5 carlengths behind, and then gassing it til I was within 6 inches of his back bumper. I'm pretty much an automotive compression wave factory.
5
You seem to be having issues with thrusting.
Have you considered mating with a person in lieu of trying to penetrate his.. trunk?
1
This was NOT stop-and-go traffic. This was a pretty good flow of traffic to be honest. You would need a 1/4 to 1/2 mile gap in most cities during peak traffic time to not have to stop. In St. Louis on the 270, if there are no accidents, odds are your max speed is going to be about 10mph at the bad interchanges, and once you stop...your not going anywhere for at least 10 seconds before your back up to 10mph again. Not to mention you would never be able to put that much of a gap in unless you are only doing 5mph or less, because if there is more than 2 inches of room for someone to squeeze in front of you, they will.
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4
I have been trying to say this all night. Apparently most people on reddit don't live in areas where there is real traffic.
3
So basically we need pace cars for highway traffic.
4
I'd hate to be driving behind this guy.
3
It would be extremely annoying, but if his theory is correct, you would actually get to where you're going faster.
7
not faster. just with less acceleration-deceleration cycles...as a goal. even that is not guaranteed.
in fact, i would argue that he is delusional that this style of driving is just as fast. you might have noticed how the car in front of him is in constant flux but is always someone who just passed him. his claim that one car in front of you is like one second additional time is nothing more than anecdotal conjecture. plus, he's completely neglecting the opportunity costs (for lack of a better term) of being further ahead.
the only thing this style of driving offers is, perhaps, improved safety. efficiency, time savings, or anything else is complete bunk.
edit: i'd like to point out that for half that video he was driving in a passing lane and never passed anyone. that's pretty obnoxious driving in it's own right.
8
He can't drive through the car ahead of him. The only way he could go faster is by changing lanes, if another lane has a higher possible average speed.
Would you like to drive fast for 10sec and then jam on your brakes and stop for 10sec, or would you like to drive half as fast and never stop? I know which one I would prefer.
4
If he wasn't passing he was in the wrong lane. PERIOD.
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3
You're missing the point. How the traffic flows behind the exit isn't important. The same number of cars are going to get through the bottleneck at the exit per minute.
0
Almost all modern highways have entrances and exits in the left side for HOV or interchanges. I don't think that excuses his driving slower than the flow of traffic in the left lane. If he had been traveling with the flow of traffic he wouldn't have been constantly passed.
0
Hence the "if his theory is correct,"
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6
exactly.
1
This does seem like common sense, but it is a good PSA. Upvoting in hopes that it will reach every single person that drives, ever.
3
Apparently not common enough, some guy from the youtube comments (Yeah yeah, fish in a barrel).
You discovered what? How to slow down peoples commute.
Anyway I am sorry I am not here to argue. I apologize. I just think you are incorrect. My opinion has been stated.
I like your videos except this one. Keep up the good work.
With enough of these guys, what good you're working to spread gets sneers and jeers from those who have never stepped inside of a math or physics classroom. If everyones driving at 60mph, and stopping for X seconds at regular intervals, and you can relatively calculate the average flow of traffic, drive at that speed, you then never have to touch your brakes. You may seem to be going slower than everyone else when they speed off from a stopped position, but its likely they'll hit another slow/stop wave, but when everyone in front slams on their brakes, you're just closing the distance until they start up again. Now that I realize it, there are far too many people in general that fit the quoted text's ineptitude.
2
The problem you are stating cannot be solved through the intentions of drivers because it assumes that all can drive a car mistake free. Mistakes happen innocently as well as through neglect but either way traffic jams cannot be prevented except by decreasing the number of cars that are on the road or increasing the capacity of the road to allow for more cars to fit on it. There just isn't enough room on the road for everyone to participate is your dream scenario and that is why you are fail at driving and only annoy the people around you because you don't realize that you are the one that isn't seeing the uniform space between the cars exists because thats how much space each have, but you think you deserve more space than everyone else on a crowded road.
1
It's not so much one driver miraculously breaking traffic for all 5 lanes on a crowded highway, its one driver absorbing the waves for everyone else in his lane, at the expense of what would otherwise seem to be common sense. Everyone behind you never has to touch their brakes if you're absorbing the waves, and there will be a gap in front of you allowing people to merge in instead of slamming on their brakes finding a spot to squeeze in from an adjacent lane of traffic, by no means are you going to solve the traffic situation as a single car, but you will almost never have to brake, saving some hardware on your vehicle, and everyone behind you gets the same benefit, average speed of stop and go usually means you're not going full speed, yet you are likely to never stop. Think of a sin wave being maximum and minimum speeds of a car from 1 to (-1), if you just hug that 0 line, or X axis, you'll never get the joy of driving at the maximum possible speed within the traffic, yet you'll be traveling at a steady speed, never really going any slower than that either. It's really an exercise of thought outside of gut instincts and knee jerk "Oh look everyones speeding up again, looks like the jam is over, let me step on my gas pedal". "Oh no its stopping again, let me slam on my brakes." Everyone behind you is doing the same thing over and over again. One person can eat those waves for everyone behind him.
1
The most important bit is the one he says at the end: do not be aggressive when driving through traffic. It will lead nowhere and it has a bad effect in your mentality.
His other points are valid but quite relative.
3
I agree, I am not aggressive in the traffic, and I don't have ill will towards the traffic but to hell if I am going to slow down and make a gap so the entire world, except the poor souls behind me, can pass me and get there faster than me.
-1
I've tried to do this but people just keep cutting in front of me to fill up the space, like they're going to get there faster.
3
and if you kept doing it they likely would have gotten there much faster because you were in real traffic.
0
Yeah, this guy's video is about fake traffic where stop and go drivers get there as fast as people traveling at the average speed. Hit the nail on the head, supersleuth.
2
if people check their egos and realize everyone is not out to get them, driving could be a lot more enjoyable.
3
I would not then be able to do the Rocky Victory Dance at the end of my driveway each night. And my retiree neighbors would no longer understand that I Won The Commute for the 3,680th night in a row, leaving Hagar The Accountant and Bill The Meek in my dust, one light back. And my wife would not know to bring offerings of Ale and Beef to quench my thirst from the Day of Conquest and TPS Reports. The children would fail to bow before me and honor my automotive prowess and the dog would mock me with a Dance of the Leg Hump.
This would not work out for me.
2
But what if you put hot sauce on your burrito?
3
Two ideas for the gum'mint.
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official city traffic shepherds to do this. Maybe just cops on patrol
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Signage to explain and encourage the practice.
3
I think that in 3+ lane highways, the left most lane should be 50% rumble strips so that people get over, pass, then want to get back out of the way which allows other fast drivers to pass without impediment.
1
If someone with a hell of a lot of cash liked this idea, they could buy an advert on tv, across multiple channels, and broadcast in then.
1
I can always tell when the piggies are out trying to write their tickets because 270 south is backed up an extra 2 miles in the morning. Pigs create traffic not clear it.
0
If people would drive like they walk this would be a much better world. If you are walking at the mall and someone tries to cut in front of you to enter a store do you speed up and cut them off or do you slow a little and let them by? Courtesy and a smile goes a long way to make your day and the the peoples day you interact with too.
tl;dr calm the fuck down while driving and try to be nice.
3
ONce the space in front of you grows large enough those behind you will pass you, cut ahead of you and jam themsleves into the stop and go traffic in front of you...at least this is always true in FL.
I'm pretty sure you will last at most about a year driving like that in Miami before someone pulls a gun out on you.
[deleted]
I used to do this type of stuff a lot. Some people would indeed start raging. Tail-gating you, honking, zooming around you. But it works, and it's great to get off the brakes and just coast along at 20mph or whatever.
It happens in Boston as well.
[deleted]
Just let it go. It is better for everyone.