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What Are Traffic Waves and Why Do They Happen So Much?

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Re: What Are Traffic Waves and Why Do They Happen So Much?

#71

Post by andegre »

dismal2 wrote: post #51

If you're in the left lane and going slower than the guy behind you, pull to the right. I wish people in America would be taught this, I'm amazed at how often light traffic I encounter is from a few people meandering in the left most lanes and then everyone behind just matching their speed. Obviously does nothing about major traffic but still annoying. Besides that, people need to stop thinking of driving as a compet…

This is my biggest "pet-peeve". It seriously pisses me off! What makes it worse, in Iowa, half the time there ARE NO CARS in the lane to the right. They're just retarded and drive in the left lane.

Re: What Are Traffic Waves and Why Do They Happen So Much?

#72

Post by mateo411 »

marknow wrote: post #56

I wish, for those of us that ride motorcycles in this type of traffic in the US, that all states would adopt a sensible lane-spitting allowance for motorcycles. In country after country, lane-splitting has proven to help reduce congestion, and yet, if I try it here, I'll get a ticket. Ridiculous.

You can lane split in California.

Re: What Are Traffic Waves and Why Do They Happen So Much?

#73

Post by nradov »

Widespread use of adaptive cruise control basically solves this problem. That's the technology where you can set the car to follow a certain distance behind the car in front, and then it accelerates or brakes as necessary. The systems use radar or stereoscopic cameras to measure distance. Once 20%+ of cars on a road segment are using ACC then everything smooths out. Now that the price of ACC has come way down I think the government should offer rebates for purchasing the ACC option on new cars. It would be more cost effective than building new roads or adding lanes.

http://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.69.066...

Re: What Are Traffic Waves and Why Do They Happen So Much?

#74

Post by [deleted] »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #64
dismal2 wrote: post #51

If you're in the left lane and going slower than the guy behind you, pull to the right. I wish people in America would be taught this, I'm amazed at how often light traffic I encounter is from a few people meandering in the left most lanes and then everyone behind just matching their speed. Obviously does nothing about major traffic but still annoying. Besides that, people need to stop thinking of driving as a compet…

Maybe on some tiny two lane rural highway can you get away with the left being only a passing lane, but in an urban congested 10-12 lane expressway with exits on both the left and right, well, those rules just don't apply. The reality is that cars are becoming very ineffcient methods of transport. Most carry only one driver, take up a lot of space, etc. The days of driving on a rural highway with two lanes and having…

[deleted]

Re: What Are Traffic Waves and Why Do They Happen So Much?

#75

Post by thunderbong »

knodi123 wrote: post #44

Does anyone else remember the scene in Mission Impossible 3, where tom cruise is hosting a dinner party full of guests who only know his fake cover identity as a statistician working on traffic waves for the department of transportation? The movie portrays it as conversational kryptonite, where he briefly discusses traffic issues in order to weaponize boredom and get some people to leave him alone. That part broke my…

I don't know if you've seen this video[0]. It helped me understand traffic waves quite a bit

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGFqfTCL2fs

Re: What Are Traffic Waves and Why Do They Happen So Much?

#76

Post by sukilot »

Inception wrote: post #60

I would never get closer than a car's length away from the driver in front of me if I was driving 60 mph; why should I act any differently when I'm driving 30 mph? Speed is trivial - the gap must be maintained so drivers have the opportunity to react to cars around them without having to make any drastic changes in speed.

Because following distance is irrelevant. Following time matters, and that is a function of speed.

Re: What Are Traffic Waves and Why Do They Happen So Much?

#77

Post by catbird »

morley wrote: post #42
ninkendo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be sure the cars behind you aren't even more compressed than they otherwise would be if you're leaving so much space in front of you like that? One thing I hated about that article was that the author assumed he was doing such a great service for everyone by "smoothing out" the traffic waves by leaving a buffer, but he never really proved it; he just waved his hands and said that it looked like the cars b…

Whenever I see an article about traffic patterns, I inevitably see this exchange: Person 1: You can fix traffic waves by smoothing! Person 2: Smoothing traffic waves makes no sense! It's frustrating. I don't know what to believe. Is there any peer-reviewed, simulation- and data-backed research that puts this issue to bed for good?

Yes, there are many, many papers about this in the civil engineering literature, going back to the 1950s. Cellular automata models, fluid flow models, you name it. If you're really interested to learn more, search google scholar for "traffic flow," "traffic wave" or similar.

Even the wikipedia article on "Traffic flow" is quite comprehensive. [0]

It really annoys me when people come up with a "theory" and write a blog post about it without doing a shred of actual research on the subject.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_flow

Re: What Are Traffic Waves and Why Do They Happen So Much?

#78

Post by ljf »

andegre wrote: post #71
dismal2 wrote: post #51

If you're in the left lane and going slower than the guy behind you, pull to the right. I wish people in America would be taught this, I'm amazed at how often light traffic I encounter is from a few people meandering in the left most lanes and then everyone behind just matching their speed. Obviously does nothing about major traffic but still annoying. Besides that, people need to stop thinking of driving as a compet…

This is my biggest "pet-peeve". It seriously pisses me off! What makes it worse, in Iowa, half the time there ARE NO CARS in the lane to the right. They're just retarded and drive in the left lane.

Just a note - not sure if it is the case but the downvotes are likely due to your use of 'retarded'. Outside of the US, using it in a negative context as you have here is considered offensive.

Re: What Are Traffic Waves and Why Do They Happen So Much?

#79

Post by [deleted] »

greggyb wrote: post #53
dismal2 wrote: post #51

If you're in the left lane and going slower than the guy behind you, pull to the right. I wish people in America would be taught this, I'm amazed at how often light traffic I encounter is from a few people meandering in the left most lanes and then everyone behind just matching their speed. Obviously does nothing about major traffic but still annoying. Besides that, people need to stop thinking of driving as a compet…

In my driving experience in the US: If a highway has two lanes, the average speed in the left lane is higher than the average speed in the right, but the only major passing opportunities are on the right when there's an empty stretch (because no one merges right). If a highway has >2 lanes, the left is never consistently the fastest moving lane, and almost every passing opportunity comes from moving right. It is not…

[deleted]
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