I think there'd be fewer jams if people all drove manual trannies. The subtleties of drivetrain braking and speed modulation help even out the flow. There's nothing worse to me than seeing an auto driver tailgating someone and constantly tapping the brakes to start the chain reaction behind him.

thats why for commutes we need those things from Minority Report so we can hoon on weekends

two wheels split the lane
sliding in and out of space
high gas mileage too

@ash78: Hell yes!

@ash78: This is what my dad always used to curse about growing up. He'd leave a large gap between our car and the one in front and maintain a constant speed either in first or second gear.

I mean, it worked until an asshole eventually slides into your space that you are using as a buffer zone.

@ash78: I've always had the best luck in the truck lane(s) in 0-20mph traffic.

It's a physical impossibility for those guys to start and stop quickly, so they tend to have a much healthier steady creep that turns out to be faster in the end.

In fact, I've found the inverse to be true as well: the fast lane has the highest peak-to-trough difference in speed. They'll average 25mph, but it's an even split between 50 and 0.

@FightingChance:

damn straight

Well, at least you can sell your car in Mexico

@Advice...Gun_It: Yep, and all the people who THINK you're going slow in the left lane (because of the buffer zone), so they zoom around on the right, all pissed off when they find out the traffic ahead is the same speed.

One other thing that would help--probably more practical than making everyone drive a manual--is one of those trip/instantaneous mpg readouts that hooks into the OBD port. Having that readout on my dash changed a lot about the way I drive in mundane situations.

@ash78: Amen! What really churns my butter are the right lane zoom & boom pilots. You know the ones who know that there is a freaking entrance ramp jammed full of cars on the other side of the hill, yet they jump on that lane. After zooming ahead, they plant the brakes and force their way back over just to gain a few carlengths. This process completely disrupts the flow behind them for half a mile, thereby creating more people who do the same, etc etc..

@ash78:

+5,000,000

but the physicist from Nippon failed to factor in the DelMarHeights phenomenon: idiotic soccer moms in europeans SUVs from brands who should stick to sports cars, driving solo, on cellular phones to housekeepers/nannies, instructing them to pick up Colby/Dillon/pekingese in the other car so husband can make his squash game (or liason with mistress). These huge vehicles occupy large space yet transport little, and are notoriously aggressive and prone to lane-changing. Related to OrangeCountyHousewife Syndrome.

@TurboBrick: "churns my butter"... COTD?

This study has been done a few times and they've found that jams usually form due to one (yes, one) driver's actions: [www.sciencedaily.com]

They are right, autopilot would allow many more cars to use congested roads without jamming. But it would suck if you couldn't ever drive yourself.

Uh oh...don't let my wife know that you guys got me started on this. She has to listen to this rant. A lot. My rules:

1) It doesn't take two cars two lanes to go the SAME SPEED. The reason we have 15 lane highways everywhere is that most people drift along blissfully unaware that they're taking up space. This wastes my tax dollars and my planet.

2) No cel phones, newspapers, make-up application, etc. Most people should have to have a special license to drink coffee and smoke while driving. Not because it's particularly difficult. Because they're particularly stupid.

3) I don't ask you for much. I just ask that you move the hell out of my way (to the right) when I'm behind you and obviously want to go faster than you. If I passed you on the right, you were in the wrong lane. Ask Skip Barber or Bob Bondurant. You lose points in both their schools if you allow someone to pass you on the right. As long as the right passer isn't driving like a total Yabo, as turbobrick pointed out above.

4) You aren't a cop. It isn't your job to slow me down. Slow traffic is just as dangerous as fast traffic. Speed doesn't kill. Differential in speed kills. If you don't have the capability to go the speed limit, take the surface streets. That being said, don't go 140 mph on anything when you know that there are 105 year old people sharing the road with you. You will scare them upside down. I've seen it happen.

5) Immediate and unappealable death penalty for anyone who rubbernecks an accident. You can't/won't/aren't going to help. Move along. If you want to see an injured person, go home and jump off your roof.

Thanks, I feel better now.

I'll fix traffic jams forever, bring me the KILLDOZER!

Detroit has the specialized group of people who HAVE to be in the left lane, until the last instant they can exit. If the path isn't clear, they just stop and wait till it is, effectivley causing the huge and continued jam behind, a virtual bottleneck if you will.

This is worsened by the fact they're stopped and the other lane sees this as a chance to speed up and "cut them off" killing any chance of them reaching the exit.

@lemondriver: COTD.

Especially that part about "differentials in speed". I've been saying that for years, mostly to rolled eyes and blank stares. My wife still doesn't belive the Interstate is safer than surface streets...

@lemondriver: If you want to see an injured person, go home and jump off your roof.

Well put.

@ash78: You're just saying that cause you already locked it up in the Tata thread.

But, I'm no less honored....

:-)

@lemondriver:

Thankfully my 75 mile per day commutes are a thing of the past, but I still have nightmares. Cars should be equipped with missiles. All I ever wanted was just 1 clean kill per day and I would have been a happy lad.

98 SAAB? Have you considered selling it to a Mexican?

@lemondriver:

My sentiments exactly. Thanks for putting that out there. That should be read at the beginning of every driver training and traffic school class.

@lemondriver: Wow. Hear, hear. The awful truth is that on most congested freeways if everyone drove at exactly 60 mph there would be few to zero jams.

This is a little off-topice but since we're ranting, I still think anyone with a truck/SUV should take an extra driving test that forces them to: A) drive in RWD on snow/ice/loose sand; B) perform a few high-speed maneuvers to see what's it like to change direction; and C) experience what it's to be tailgated by an SUV at night, preferably using xenon bulbs.

@ash78: "There's nothing worse to me than seeing an auto driver tailgating someone and constantly tapping the brakes to start the chain reaction behind him."

Living in a country where nearly everyone drives a manual, you still get that - there's always some nobhead driving in too high a gear who doesn't realise that their car will slow down if they take their foot off the accelerator, so they brake all the time and select a lower gear only when they absolutely have to.

They don't drive the car, it constantly runs away from them.

I've noticed that 5pm traffic in the Raleigh/Durham area is lighter on rainy days. That tells me that there are people on the road on clear days that probably don't need to be there in the first place. If you're taking up space in traffic just to drop your kids at the mall, you can die in a fire.

i think a major problem is every genius who goes to work for the highway department thinks 'traffic control' is something that they can do, rather than just picking a major thoroughfaire, timing the lights for it, and then making the side streets suffer.

instead, i get a drive down a 6 lane road, where the lights every 200 yards change to allow either 0 or 1 car cross some dinky sidestreet.

@lemondriver:
If you want to see an injured person, go home and jump off your roof.

and I have to 3rd that this is comment of the day.

If they ever sell Air Cars that fly the scientists and engineers will be able to model traffic in three dimensions using spherical coordinates. That day, my friends, all traffic problems will be a thing of the past.

Smooth jazz in a '98 Saab... No comment. (Beyond what I've already made.)

@rlj676: Yeah!! And why do most Michiganers pass on the right? Picture this: me in the middle of three lanes, going 5-10mph over the speed limit, left and right lanes empty, someone approaching from behind. Nine times out of ten, they will pass on the right. Even if there's a car a little ways up on the right. They'll then change back to the center lane. It's definitely strongest in Michigan. If I cruise in the right lane there, people look all confused and tailgate for a while before passing. If I get over to the right for someone approaching, they also get confused. I don't understand.

My wife is convinced that they have the inverse thought process, and can't understand all these Ohio drivers that keep cutting them off by getting into the right lane.

@FightingChance:

just got through Austin I-35 lane-splitting like there is no tomorrow.

5pm rush hour in a car = 45 minutes
5pm rush hour on a motobike= 15 minutes.

Turn signals and horns are for people who are unsure of getting the right-of-way. Loud revving and open pipes tells people this is MY right-of-way.

Just keep reminding yourself: you are not stuck in a traffic jam. If you drive poorly, you *become* the traffic jam for all those behind you.

That means it's up to you to do whatever you can to keep moving at a slow but steady speed. I use the following guidelines on freeways when traffic is very dense:

1) Keep sufficient distance from the vehicle in front of you.

2) Coast rather than brake to dampen out any velocity changes propagating back from the vehicles in front of you as best you can.

3) When a neighboring lane encounters a flow restriction, give a single affected vehicle the opportunity to merge into your lane in front of you. If the lane next to yours is absorbing extra traffic this way, consider it subject to a flow restriction.

4) Try to maintain your speed when passing the site of an accident that is already being dealt with by emergency services.

5) Give a wide berth to vehicles trying to reach an off-ramp or emergency lane.

6) Transfer to the exit lane well before your own off-ramp.

7) Transfer to the emergency lane if you suspect your vehicle might break down soon for any reason.

If everyone followed these simple guidelines, traffic jams would be much more benign and dissolve far more rapidly. Ideally, someone would write a computer simulation so novice drivers could gain an appreciation of the natural dynamics of traffic jams and learn how to behave when they are part of one.

Unfortunately, there are many disruptive drivers who opportunistically change lanes in the mistaken belief that this will get them to their destination any faster. Instead, it merely prevents the jam from clearing in the lane in which they end up while doing little for one they left. Worse, the driver immediately affected may decide that adhering to the guidelines is counterproductive, aggravating the situation.

Without proper driver training, it is also impossible to make it an offense to behave disruptively in a traffic jam - something that could be identified automatically by monitoring surveillance cameras positioned along roads that are prone to traffic jams.

Everyone who is physically capable of doing so should be forced to ride a motorcycle for a year before being granted a license to drive a car. Two years for a truck or SUV. Nothing else quite hammers home exactly how dangerous driving really is or how vital paying attention to the road and traffic conditions can be.

It's the brake lights. 80% of drivers, including my wife, are just driving along looking at the brake lights of the car in front of them. Slightly tapping your brakes to reduce a little speed causes these idiots to panic. Then you have the Calgon effect. You slow down by 5mph and they slow down by 20. And the idiot behind them another 20. And so on and so and so on. Soon, everyone is stopped.

Then there is the "restart". If each driver takes 2 seconds to react to the car in front of them moving, you only need to be 150 cars back to have a 5 minute delay.

My solution? Get rid of brake lights.

Ummmmmm, this is hardly new science.

It's called queuing systems, and this "Internet" we're using right now wouldn't work, if our understanding of traffic flow wasn't far beyond that of auto traffic.

What about rubber necking? I think they should erect a huge black curtain around whatever incident is occurring on the side of the freeway. Too many times there has been a backup and you come to find out there are some dudes exchanging info for some minor accident on the side of the road. C'mon people, accidents aren't a new concept! The city should erect a large black curtain whenever they can for incidents on the freeway.

You can tell I am venting here (my commute involves driving on the 405N from LAX to the Valley during rush hour)

@GiltProto: And then, just like the Detroit left lane idiots, we'll have twits that wait until the last second to change altitude when they get close to their destination. Thus messing up smooth traffic flow in 3 dimentions.

In the Netherlands, where traffic is 5 billion times worse than in the US, they have variable speed indications every 500 meters. the whole system is controlled by cameras and computers and speed indications change every time needed.
If you dare to drive faster, don't, there are speed cameras everywhere.
The traffic is still bad, but it did help.

@ash78: There would also be fewer traffic jams if people had to do *comprehensive* driving tests (including lots of parking, skid control, merging onto a busy highway and lane discipline)... and have to do the test in a car with a manual transmission.

And to help thin out the driving ranks more... require that anyone who gets into a collision must retake their driving test when their licence is up for renewal - regardless of fault because it is every driver's responsibility to avoid collisions, as well as not cause them.

@MngoJuce: I once sat in 20+ minutes of traffic because an attractive woman had a flat tire and every guy passing by had to stop and check her out.

detroit drivers are the worst at f*cking it up for everyone else. now that i drive a manual i'm even more annoyed. what is this slamming on the brakes, then rolling up an entire car length at every red light bullsh*t?

don't try going the speed limit in the right lane, you'll have angry drivers ramming up your ass. i prefer to let my foot off the accelerator, and let them pass angrily with no signal. have fun with that speedtrap ahead, genius.

*everyone* passes on the right. i'm actually surprised when i get passed on the left. and the left lane is constantly occupied by those who feel that they are entitled to do the speed limit in the passing lane, causing people to pass at high speed in the right lane, often near entrance ramps.

lane hogs are usually someone yapping on their cell phone, or some guy whose ego gets bruised when i downshift and try to pass, then cuts in front of me and slows down. want to impress your girl? haul ass in the left lane, or let a faster chick through, egomaniac.

i can't wait to drive in germany, these stupid detroiters are f*cking up my driving high.

I got yelled at to "slow down!" by a prius driver the other day who was in the left lane pacing the guy in the center. I didn't tailgate, but slowly crept up on him letting him know he could get over and let me feed the mile of open road to my twin daughter, er turbos. I saw him make eye contact, then kept lightly tapping the brakes to let me know he was policing my speed. He eventually got over so he could lecture me, and I smiled and gave him the thumbs up as I spooled off into the distance at 70.

I'm all for ppl doing what they can to help, but you have to let me do my thing, too. Thanks for driving that Prius, I feel better when I get 9MPG for a tank at a track event ;)

@abgwin: ROTFL! Soooooo true!

Another 98 lb woman in a 10 tonne SUV... LOLz!

@jolietjake: What about the dingleberries that have their foot on the brake constantly? I've seen an inordinate number of two-footed drivers lately.

And another thing! What about people that only have the high-mount taillight working? Seen a lot of them, too!

SOLUTION!!!!
Not for everybody BUT...
Traffic jams shit me bad. I get moody and irritable and I guess most other people around me are too.

So for these situations I keep a nice smooth joint of the best hydro grass (or whatever I'm smoking that week) in my ciggie packet. Smoke it and fly home...
...happy, smiling, singing.

Don't agree or you think I'm irresponsible?
Please call 1800-FUCKOFFPURITAN and leave a message:)