Why do traffic jams happen for no reason




















These feelings of frustration can lead to other aggressive driving practices that endanger other drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and workers on the road such as speeding, failing to yield, and running red lights.

In fact, it might result in an accident, leading to more delays. Most of us can probably admit that we are occasionally guilty of one or more of these dangerous driving habits. But, just like changing any bad habits and behaviors, it takes both will power and a focus on being part of the solution to the problem to do your part to reduce traffic jams and car accidents.

There are many reasons as to what causes traffic jams but being part of the solution will help you get to your destination safer and may even influence other drivers around you, who knows! Find more tips for driving safety and maintenance in our monthly newsletter. I would love to add that if you do not currently have an insurance policy or maybe you do not form part of any group insurance, you will well gain from seeking the aid of a health agent.

Self-employed or those that have medical conditions commonly seek the help of one health insurance brokerage. Thanks for your text. Non-use of turn signals which show intention but do not grant privilege and ignorance about freeway lane usage the passing lane is not for cruising, for example. Plus law enforcement has gotten lax in many states as legislatures have trimmed state patrol budgets.

Not planning ahead you know it will be sweltering hot so leave for the beach at 5 am not am when everyone else is on the beach freeway. All distractions. Downtown Los Angeles staggered their office hours during the Olympics it worked great should be done regularly. Also the need for bullet trains. Supersized vehicles also are a contributing factor. The Fordasaurus trucks, huge SUVs ect. These stop-and-go waves can travel along a highway for miles. It begins to display dynamic instability, meaning small disturbances are amplified.

The instability is a positive feedback loop. Above the critical density, any additional vehicle reduces the number of cars per second passing through a given point on the road. This in turn means it takes longer for a local pileup to move out of a section of the road, increasing vehicle density even more, which eventually adds up to stop-and-go traffic. The weirdest part: there's no construction, accident, or other possible explanation for the traffic. Why does this happen? As it turns out, a few different groups of researchers have been using mathematical calculations and real-world experiments to try answering this question.

And they think they have the answer. They also have suggestions on how to stop these jams. If there are enough cars on a highway, any minor disruptions to the flow of traffic can cause a self-reinforcing chain reaction: one car brakes slightly, and the ones behind it brake just a bit more to avoid hitting it, with the braking eventually amplifying until it produces a wave of stopped or slowed traffic.

Even when cars leave this traffic wave, though, the wave itself doesn't disappear: it gradually drifts backward, against the direction of traffic. He and others developed the concept of these waves which they call jamitons, because they're analogous to waves in physics called solitons using computer algorithms that simulate driving behavior:.

Japanese researchers have also conducted real-world experiments that come to the same conclusion. In one, they instructed 22 drivers to drive at the same speed Inevitably, traffic waves formed:.

In one sense, it seems reasonable to blame these phantom traffic jams on individual drivers. The models indicate that these jams are more likely to form when people drive as fast as possible, then finally brake when necessary to avoid hitting the car in front of them, triggering a chain reaction.

Another way to think of it, says Berthold Horn — an MIT computer scientist who's worked on the same topic — is to try driving so that you stay halfway between the car in front of you and the one behind you.

This will lead to you avoid sudden braking when possible. With the help of engineering students at high schools in Maine , Horn and Wang have also built a robot simulation that shows how bilateral control can suppress phantom traffic jams. Increasing the spacing of vehicles dampens the effect of slowdowns by cars in front of a given car, so that the slowing is not amplified until it becomes a phantom jam, the researchers said.

A video from the project shows a train of autonomous robots running along a track without bilateral control; they eventually back up in phantom jams. But when the robots are switched over to bilateral control by flashing the lights in the room , each autonomous robot tries to keep itself halfway between the robot in front and the one behind; the phantom jams disappear as a result, Horn said. Since starting his research on phantom traffic jams, Horn has learned that schools of fish and flocks of birds and bats use similar spacing strategies to avoid hitting each other while swimming or flying in densely packed groups.

In particular, studies of millions of bats emerging at dusk from caves in Southeast Asia showed that each bat used a form of bilateral control to reduce the likelihood of collisions with other bats in the densely packed swarm, Horn said. Unlike bats, birds and fish, however, humans have difficulty judging distances behind them.



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