lol :) I was in a stand still traffic jam once, and got impatient and could not see what was causing it because the line was several kilometers. So I honked a few times, which is futile I did think as the car in front of you has nothing to do with it. But to my surprise the in front of me also honked, sending the honk to next car, and next car did the same and the entire cue sent the honk forward :) Right after the que started moving and we found out is was because of road work ahead. But it was really cool the cars forwarded the honk of frustration lol :)
Oh, how many times have I seen this. You are stuck in a traffic jam, you see in your navigator its end in a kilometer, you expect to see some terrible accident at the end, but... everyone just suddenly starts driving at normal speed.
I happened to me. I was stuck on 3 lane highway for 20 minutes just to see that idiots were busy looking at some parked cars with cops at the end. I couldn't believe how retarded the drivers were.
I happened to me. I was stuck on 3 lane highway for 20 minutes just to see everybody have been busy looking at some parked cars with cops at the end. I was really pissed because i was taking someone to train.
Had this happen once in Orlando. Finally managed to get past the vehicles in front and it was empty road. A traffic jam entirely caused by one person going too slow and presumably the cars on either side matching his speed instead of driving the speed limit.
I once saw a car get on the highway and cut across three lanes of busy traffic. Everyone had to do an emergency brake behind him and three lanes of traffic were stuck 10 seconds later.
A small under-powered car full of morbidly obese people merged into a 65mph zone at about 35mph directly into the left lane in front of me going 70mph as a teenager and almost got me and everyone behind me in the left lane killed. During rush hour no less. Some people..
@@theXR228 You're forgetting the third and most probable scenario that he is the person that cut across the highway and also happens to be Lewis Hamilton so it's quite earned to see it as a skill issue from his perspective.
it’s crazy because it pops up today right after sitting in traffic for 20 minutes expecting an accident or something, come to find out someone had broken down all the way on the shoulder some people had just wanted to slow down to look at them
I was thinking this too. Blows my mind that people will pull over 3 lanes AND slow down to 20-30 below the speed limit for a cop that has someone pulled over
@@dizzthenibbler4070 it's happened to me before where I thought the cop was busy attending the other guy he stopped, but then he instead chased after me
@@codyjohnson6427 that's just poor timing, and I'm talking about people who aren't speeding already, will still slow down. Like a 65 mph and ppl will be all the way over and doing 45.
@@dizzthenibbler4070 I get the whole getting into the next lane thing, just common courtesy. But I also can't stand it when people slam on their brakes as they pass the cop. Like, are you THAT scared behind the wheel?
And there are ways to reduce phantom jams, after they have been created. By slowing down and staying in motion as long as possible behind a traffic jam the bad stop and go can be stopped.
yea that works great until someone comes up behind you doing the speed limit, slams on their brakes, and the whole chain reaction starts all over again!
None of the people in this video are necessarily bad drivers. The test is _designed_ to cause a traffic jam. The primary issue is that they're packed too closely together (again, by design, to demonstrate that tailgating is bad). Prevent phantom traffic jams. Keep an even distance between the cars in front of and behind you. Brake gently and minimally.
exactly. When coming to a 'jam', slow down so that you are still moving then they move... it will prevent the people behind you from experiencing the same 'jam'. You wont ever feel that difference being the driver that stops the jam. You still see the slow down. But you can make driving better for the people behind you.
This makes perfects sense! I have noticed that when someone DOES leave a gap, there are people that RUSH to jump in and fill the gap just to then JAM on their brakes! I just wish I had a helicopter option on my car for those times....
I had a place of work where, whenever someone had an anniversary, they would put food out on a circular table, gather everyone together, give a brief speech and then tell us to dig in. No matter how many times they did it, no matter how many times I tried to tell everyone that lines need a beginning and an end, people would still form a closed-loop and then wonder why nobody was moving. It says a lot about the caliber of people I was working with for sure.
You make a good point. I've never experienced that scenario, but I imagine upon discovering the solution to an annoying problem and finding yourself ignored, that it would really get under a person's skin.
In my experience, unless you continuously direct them to do otherwise, people will enter and exit from literally anywhere even on a straight table and cause chaos. Used to do catering/serving for small-medium weddings (50-150 guests) and even when we served from the buffet, people still had to be told sometimes to get in line at the end with the salad. Then you still had retards skipping the salad, getting served an entree, and then trying to *go backwards against the line* to get the salad. If it was self-serve, it was just a free-for all with less coordination than 100 pigs trying to feed from the same trough.
My challenge to myself in heavy traffic is to never touch my brakes. Keep a healthy following distance and release the gas when I see red in front of me. If I do it right, I’ll catch up to the car in front just as they’re starting to accelerate.
I do the same thing, keeps driving interesting. Makes it much easier being in a standard transmission. I don’t know if i could go back to automatic at this point
and this selfish, uncooperative behavior during rush hour results in multiple people missing light cycles by sending a wave of late starts at each intersection AND limiting top speed to well below speed limit, further limiting the flow of traffic behind you
@@kamikeserpentail3778 nah I bet it would make the problem worse. More self driving cars = more cars on the road = more traffic, and inevitably traffic jams. The only real solution to traffic is better public transportation and urban planning
@@aRennix the traffic being caused by humans not driving smootly if all the cars were self-driving, and could tell each other what they were doing, traffic jams wouldnt happen
I watched a video like 10-15 years ago by some dude who claimed he solved this problem. All you gotta do is put a ton of space between you and the car in front of you, and try to maintain a consistent speed by watching the cars further ahead. The space acts as a kind of buffer that halts any waves of stopped cars rippling backwards. You don't necessarily get where you're going any faster, but it's much more engaging than just sitting in traffic, and you make the road better for everyone behind you. I drive like this now, and I've noticed another added benefit, which is people merging, usually to get off the highway. If it's bumper to bumper, you have to stop to let a car in if they want to merge into your lane, which further halts any traffic behind you. But if you've got a ton of space in front of you, people can merge as they please with little to no impact on you or the cars behind you. As long as I don't have anywhere to be, I absolutely love driving in traffic. It's way less boring, and it feels like I'm doing a service to everyone around me. I'm also far from the only person who does this, and it can be fun to encounter others. It's funny because if they're behind you, you end up in this almost oasis, where everyone to either side is bumper to bumper, but you've got like 50+ feet of empty road in front of and behind you lol
The problem is that the average space that can be between cars is the circumference of this circle divided by the number of cars. Meaning it is not possible for each of these cars to have enough distance to prevent jams.
I do the same. Big gap in front, and a constant slow roll, always watching not just the car in front of me but also 10+ cars down the line. So much nicer than gostopgostopgostopgostop every 3 seconds. And you get there in the same amount of time or better.
@@timmiller1thats true. Most people want to get ahead and will take that gap as a way to beat traffic, while others are oblivious to their tail gating.
@@timmiller1 It is possible... The road is REALLY long and the JAM is short, it could be a 20km road where at the first 10 you drive at 100km/h with tons of space, then you have 1km of driving at 5km/h bumper to bumper and then 100 km/h again for 9km. If you just stretch the distance of the JAM to be 5 km you have solved the jam.
The problem with this approach, at least where I live (big city, traffic 24/7), is that people will just endlessly try to cut you off to get into that free space, somewhat alleviating traffic in other lanes but completely halting it in yours. Also expect people behind you to be pissed that you're letting everyone cut you (and them, by extension) off. This only truly works if everyone, or at least most people, do it at the same time. It's the classic tragedy of the commons: some people are nice and others take advantage of them; people don't want to be taken advantage of so they stop being nice and start taking advantage of others instead; eventually everyone is trying to take advantage of everyone else, ruining the experience for everyone involved.
I remember seeing a comedian a long time ago who had a joke that went something like "we're all stuck in traffic because some asshole 3 miles ahead of us tapped his brakes 4 years ago."
Here in Brazil, some areas where its common for people to drive over the speed limit the traffic guys in plain clothes create the phantom jam on weekends and holidays to diminish the collisions.
@@fincarosa what youre referring to is called induced demand. A phenomenon in which more lanes work for a while before more and more people consider going by car filling it up again. That also got its limits cause at some point there arent any more people or cars. Its also less of a factor if good alternatives to the car exist. So in cases where roads are still clocked even though a good train, tram and metro exist an additional lane can solve that problem permanently. Thats a big factor in the US in addition to very cheap fuel.
@@fincarosa By this logic, reducing lanes wouldn't make traffic worse, but it does. More lanes does help, you absolute oaf. Just because it doesn't eliminate the problem to 0 doesn't mean it doesn't help
Back in 1983 - when computers were new, I attended a Civil Engineering seminar and a visiting professor introduced us to a computer model simulator (very rudimentary) on traffic flow. Everything was doing just fine and all the dots were moving at the same speed. He then introduced a car hitting their brakes, and a backup formed and propagated "up stream', showing all the cars had to slow down and even stop. He then stopped a car, that was worse. He then let the cars go at different speeds and that made it even worse. This is cool to see it with real cars and of course, we see it every day.
We called it the slinky effect when hiking in the miltary. Our formation was determined by height, tall guys in front, short guys in back. Taller people having a longer stride would minimize this effect but it would still happen, resulting in lots of running instead of walking if you were in the back. The instructors made us swap order once so the tall guys would understand the importance of keeping a good pace and not stopping/slowing down.
I see this every day because I live on a high floor next to a major road. It always makes me have a fun time watching it go backwards. Sometimes the traffic is light enough that it resolves, but sometimes it never resolves. It's one of the biggest problems with human drivers in dense traffic, but artificial drivers are no better (yet).
Artificial drivers will sadly never be better enough for it to matter, as this is a factor moreso of traffic density than individual bad decisions. Even a perfect AI driver will have to brake slightly when someone else is merging in, and with perfect cohesion between cars that still creates a backward-propagating wave. If the distance between vehicles is too small, the wave will persist and interfere with other waves to create pockets of traffic.
@@deadcarbonboy just not braking when the car in front is braking then accelerating. So you can very well stop some waves if you have even a normal distance margin
@@este_marco that's what I'm saying, you can't not brake when the vehicle density is too high. Traffic is caused by number of cars on the road, not solely by bad drivers
@@deadcarbonboy 90% of ppl have a good margin to improve. i legit think useless traffic slow down can be outright removed from existence if we all learned and applied the good behaviors for good flowing traffic.
As one of the other commenters suggests, dont ever stop, instead creep. This means give lots of space to the car in front of you, because unlike in this simulation, there is normally a lot of space behind you on the road, meaning any space you take up wont be amplified as much. In addition it also allows for the easier merging of other lanes into yours, if you take the sacrifice of going slightly slower, you will have a more calm time driving, and more space for safety
Which is why it is important that you always try to break LESS than the person in front of you, because if consecutive people start slowing down at the same rate or more intensely, the traffic jam grows instead of dissipating.
The slow reactions of setting off again also cause the propogation. The fact that everyone only seems to think about putting it in gear once the car that's already 5 metres away from them starts moving, is allowing the wave to keep going. If the vehicle in front of you is slowing down you should slow right down and aim to keep moving until you are about to have a crash, to smooth out the motion for the cars behind you
YES! Thank you, I was waiting for this comment. I believe you are exactly right. And, once stopped, you need immediately begin moving your car the moment that the car in front of you starts moving. Pay attention to the cars ahead of the car in front of you, so that you can time the beginning of your car's movement to precisely when the car in front of you starts moving.
@@tedz2usayep. You start moving with the car in front of the car thats in front of you only to have to press the brake again because the guy in front of you never started to move when he should have 😅
This thread is great advice if you wanna cause a rear-end in a traffic jam! 😂👍 Yes, in theory would remedy the problem, but in the real world it's extremely risky due to the unpredictable reactions of the driver in front. For instance they might feel pressured by your actions and choose irrational reactions like brake-checking you! But even without slow reacting and vengeance seeking drivers in front of you, this way of driving will quickly result in an accident, because it requires maximum alertness, extreme focus and lightning fast reactions, which will exhaust your mental resources in no time!
@@LRM12o8 the fact driving like this is considered an extreme level of alertness shows that most people shouldn't be on the road at all. Driving at any speed for any reason should require this level of attention.
45 years ago they showed us videos that were exactly like this back when they were all on film strip, before VHS or any of that replaced eall of it, we saw lots of these examples in class. They were all pretty much the same and hasn't changed over the years. Japan had the best videos on the subject and the best studies that I saw.
The rise of US highways post-war actually created a counterargument all its own, so much that the UK began advocating against US urban development, which is entirely car-centric. So yes, this has been around for many decades already. Now it's 2024 and people complain that we didn't have the foresight to predict traffic, but we had all the information years ago. Everyone was just too shortsighted to acknowledge it wasn't the solution.
We have a transfer lane from a Westbound highway to a North in my area and this happens all the time there. You can easily take it at 40 (recommended speed by signage) but, due to a minor chicane in the road most slow to 30 or 25 causing a minor jam on busy days.
Based on how recent all of these top comments are, I'm guessing the UA-cam algorithm had another episode, and everybody randomly got reccomented this 12 year old video at around the same time
I always keep a larger gap so that I can keep moving without breaking. Then some fucking idiot moves into the gap I'm maintaining and causes the whole nicely moving lane to stop. If people just stayed in their own lanes, kept a reasonable distance, just let their foot off the accelerator to maintain the distance not the break, we'd all get to where we need to go!
If you have a larger gap, that means someone else must have a smaller gap. There is only so much space. Giving yourself more time to react is the same thing as giving someone behind you less time to react.
@timmiller1 In an artificial closed loop like this, that's true, but real roads aren't closed loops! The "2 second rule" was invented (like 50 years ago when there was 1/4 of the traffic on the roads) to prevent this situation: everyone drives with 2 seconds gap to the car in front, this allows for human reaction time and gives you the buffer space to use when someone in front makes a mistake or has to avoid/accommodate some unexpected obstruction -- they brake, you have to brake a little less, the car behind you a little less, ½ a mile further back the problem has gone and nobody knows anything happened, the road flows non-stop and everyone can enter the road as they need to (showing that "the road can only contain a certain number of cars" is a laughable spurious argument). If you drive close, as some do who use that ridiculous faulty argument ("you drive with a 'huge' gap, you prevent people getting on the road"), then when someone in front slows, you have to slow more, the one behind might have to touch the brakes, the one behind that brakes harder, ½ a mile further back it's a stationary jam and nobody else can enter the road possibly causing traffic jams on previous parts of the road network.
I've always noticed in light traffic on freeways, even when there aren't "traffic jams", vehicles don't spread out. There are packs and voids. What happens is slower cars and large trucks are going at or lesser than the speed limit and form the front of the packs. Behind them are cars that would like to go faster but either adjust their speed to that speed, or are slowed until they can filter through to the front and then speed up to their normal pace, until get to the back of the next pack. These collections are usually about 20 car lengths or so in size with cars only separated by a few lengths, but the spaces between the packs can be enormous, like a quarter mile or half a mile. If you're driving a little over the average speed, you get through one of those packs, and for the next five minutes in the void, it's like you're the only one on the freeway. This would be solved by all semis only being in the rightmost one or two lanes, and the passing lane being left open just for passing. Unfortunately, literally everyone on the road thinks the speed they are going is the universal rule, and anyone that wants to go faster should go pound sand so they block the passing lane or drive anywhere they want.
Semis are already *technically* supposed to be and are required to be in the right lane when traveling and only use the left lanes when passing. An issue I've seen regularly is when a tractor can only reach 70 mph, and wants to pass several other vehicles, often other tractors, going 65. Results in a 4 minute long "Pass" in the passing lane. Major traffic jam. You're correct though, if people understood to stick to the rightmost lane any time there's space to do so, this would never really be an issue. They don't, for some reason, and that's why we can't have nice things.
@@KeterMalkuth You're both right except the Move Over Law only applies to freeways. It does not apply to any roads that have left turns. Semis and heavy trucks should be ticketed more for hogging the 3rd or 4th lane away from the left shoulder. No excuse for it. I've had Jeeps yell at me, pass me while I'm going 10 over, Pass me really close to rubbing my back quarter just to cut me off with their right signal on, so going 20+ over the limit. This is on a two lane *residential* area lol. I just honk at them when they run up close like that and show them my left signal, as I am turning left! Also I never drive close to or beside other people, so they have zero reason to harass me like that.
Where I live, we call the event of trucks ignoring the keep right rule and slowly passing eachother "elephant races" It's the end of any 2-lane speedway
@@KeterMalkuth I remember I once saw a semi try to pass another semi in the right lane. He crept along, taking 3 business days to get alongside the other guy, only to lose his momentum or whatever and just end up going the exact same speed as the truck in the right lane for like 4 miles. Backed up a lot of traffic behind him with that stunt lol
What I wonder is can this be fixed? If one driver starts driving slow enough that he never actually needs to stop for the jam then the jam would eventually be solved until it happens again, right? To elaborate: what I mean is that the guy in front of you is driving normally, when he reaches the jam he has to slow down and eventually stop because the person in front of him did so. You see him slowing down to a stop but you're going slow enough that by the time you reach him, he has already started moving again. Now you have never had to stop and all the people behind you didn't have to stop either because they had to match your speed, after the guy in front of you starts going you simply match his speed and now there's no jam (until it happens again).
That works in theory. In reality when I'm trying to do this - there's always someone from the behind who would use the chance to jump 2-3 cars ahead and merge right in front of you. The most of the people still have too much from the monkeys in their behaviour. It only works on a 1-line road, where there's no possibility to overtake you.
Seriously tho. The German driving school is already on average 7 months long, and the road experience is generally much better here than anywhere else, but this still needs to be part of the mandatory theory classes
And this, folks, is why your best bet is to do your best to never stop moving, leave enough of a gap to do that and you'll buffer the jam so it's easier on you and helps the people behind you (if they let you, or better do the same thing)
@hikingphotog I've left a gap for years and it's really not an issue. Some do, but I'm talking a gap of like 5 car lengths, so you just tap the accelerator a few seconds later. Also, it's not like they're getting there any faster than you and they're not slowing you down. Try it sometime, it's a far far less stressful way of spending your time in a car.
This is why following distance is key. With 4-6 car lengths of space you can ideally coast when you notice slower traffic. If you do need breaks or need to stop or behind a driver who overuses their breaks then add following distance or change lanes
I stayed in a high rise hotel with a great view of a busy Atlanta freeway. It was fascinating that I could watch a single car do something dumb, and up to three lanes would come to a stop in seconds, and it could stay that way for nearly an hour.
I know how to fix this. What if you just connected all the cars together and made them run on a designated schedule and stop at specific locations, no traffic jams!
You could make it produce less pollution by having it run off electricity from some kind of over head wires. Then make it more efficient and produce less micro plastics using metal rails!
Same for traffic lights. A lot of the time, the first car starts driving, then the second, then the third. But if just everyone would start driving at the same time, the line would move as a whole.
This happens on my route to work. A 4 lane highway splits with 2 lanes left, 2 lanes right. I need to go right. Our country drives on the left side of the road, so right lane is fast lane. The 2 right lanes are insanely slow up until the split, and then drive at the speed limit as soon as you're past the split. I realised it's because of this "imaginary" traffic jam, where the cars are backed up to a km before the turn for no apparent reason, then it magically clears up at/after the turn. To fix this: I drive in the second to left lane up until the traffic clears, then merge right. No one has to slow down behind me, and the traffic jam doesn't exist anymore for anyone.
I learned similar in cities skylines, one bad intersection can cause city wide traffic, and something as simple as rerouting, a fly over or deletion of the intersection can do wonders for traffic, I’m not an engineer but you can learn a lot from that game
Yes I sure hope it taught you the importance of higher capacity transportation in order to move people more efficiently. (I’m actually not sure if the first game does but I know CS2 does)
1-2 professional train conductors hauling dozens-hundreds of people at once > hundreds of people with different driving styles operating their own vehicles
@@samsonsson328 Yeah, the US isn't some tiny country, though. You can drive one or two hours in your country and end up in another country. Over here, a two-hour drive gets us in another county within the same state. We need personal transportation over here. We do have public transportation like buses and trains, but they're better suited for dense cities. We have areas in this country that are so sparse that a train system wouldn't be very feasible.
I've often noticed that the leading car in this phenomenon, mainly on a highway, is an elderly person who is driving 5-10 below the speed limit. Especially when the lane turns into a popular off ramp.
Spent 45 minutes in a jam the other day, that went for about 2 kilometers. At the end...nothing. Went from 5 kmh back to the 100 speed limit and I was fuming.
1. Don't over-brake or be stopped longer than you need to. 2. Watch the car ahead of the car in front of you, and attempt to start moving forward when they do. 3. Eliminate lag. 3. The harder you accelerate, the slower you'll have to brake when you catch up. 4. Strive for slow continuous motion.
Eliminating lag and watching the car in front you to go at the same time is impossible. The average person is physiologically too unintelligent to conceptualize a simple system like this. Their brains are literally incapable of producing thoughts that complex.
A cure to this is start moving when the 2nd car infront of you starts moving. Ofcouse stop tailgating but that entails people not using the space to cut lanes. Maybe a laser projector that just warns anyone from cutting infront of you by marking the space in red. It also lets you know if youre tailgating(sometimes i forget and be back by only 2 cars whereas i should be back by 3). Also introduce micro fines using camera and AI technology, eg lane cutting just to join a faster lane and not go towards an exit or not coming in from an entry should be fined .25 cents automatically. Going slow on the fast lane, 10 cent per 3 miles. Not breaking away from a Wolfpack, 1 cent per mile, drafting too close, 2 cent per mile. Etc. we got the technology to solve this. Maybe try this on two expressway lanes on the highway first. Also maybe some sort of scheduling notification system that says "Hey according to your calender you're selected to be part of traffic group 3.30(the time) you should leave within 10 mins to join your group. Yea you can skip this if you want but maybe you dont get access to the expressway lanes like i mentioned before. Also obv autopilot syncing. That automatically collectively controls flow of traffic. You'll see all the tech i mentioned get inevitably get implemented. But i feel like by then we'll have teleportation.
that micro fines thing is the goofiest shit i'm so sorry. i get what you're trying to say but this is not worth it. we do not have the infrastructure for that. cars will drive themselves within our lifetimes anyways. besides, would you like us to live a dystopian reality where cameras individually track every person driving and cost them money for not being robots?
@@scubasteve6175 might just be the cameras in your car that do it for you. Again, it would be voluntary. You can just choose to not use the expressway lanes like I mentioned.
@@pineappleparty1624 it does. That distance allows smooth slowing down and speeding up. Allows time for correcting the jam. Tailgating makes harsher slow downs and a even harsher chain reaction.
@@Stratus41298 true but highways cost 10x to maintain with no revenu to offset the costs of damage from overloaded modern vehicles that weighs in at almost 2 ton when empty.( ps this is a north american thing). So for long distance travel like a 4+hour long trip the train should be the main way. But for short distance travel a car or other means like a bike or tram/bus. Lets build society for humans again not just long distance cars.
Yeah, no matter which way you look at it, individual vehicles for personal transport are worse for society overall AND for individuals. A car-based society is a monstrous drain on society; walkable and bikeable cities with public transport have much less space wasted on roads and parking lots/spaces, are much quieter, have much lower road costs, much lower overall costs for individuals who don't need to own and maintain their own cars...
On busy roads, with more than one lane, this is often caused by people signalling and pulling out without checking space, forcing those in the lane to brake suddenly. Or those in the lane slowing to let someone pull out. In a single carriage roads, simply over braking, not keeping to a constant speed, and everyone doing that at different times. Yes I can cruise at 40, 50 or 60 mph, but naturally I may sometimes be a few mph quicker or slowers based on curves in road or hills, and if the person behind me has a car that manages slightly different to mine the gap closes. Additionally it is caused by someone keeping to the speed limit, or safe speed, and the person behind going the 2%+2 over the speed limit, or slightly faster than what the other considers a safe speed for the road/conditions. All of these contribute to these phantom traffic jams. Like they say, everyone drives slightly differently, and that causes the queue. Not tailgating, as trying not to tailgate means slowing down. These traffic jams are rarely caused by a normal driver/vehicle going ridiculously under the speed limit. But many seem to think that they must always drive at the speed limit, which is why around where I live - mainly country roads with the derestricted sign, many take the corners too fast and end up in ditches as they don't drive for road, they drive for the speed. Yes, it is annoying when I know I can safely go 50 (sometimes 60) on a section of the road, but as they are usually short sections staying at 40 behind someone adds seconds to my journey not minutes.
On Motorways there are always morons who hog the middle lane and refuse to change lanes, so when you are in a lane approaching a slower vehicle, you have to pull into the middle lane cause the lane hog to break and then others behind to break which causes phantom traffic jams
@starlight122012 how to say you didn't read my comment without saying you didn't read my comment. This my comment was nothing about lane hogging, get a life. STOP HARASSING ME.
@@tkralva.6668 How is one reply harassing you, you silly snowflake? You mentioned a road with more than one lane, maybe be more specific on that, because that is ambiguous. My comment is still valid regarding lane changes due to not enough space, yes I did read your comment.
Sad life. Let’s all take buses and trains and relax and never have to worry about traffic again (if we all stop driving and use higher capacity alternatives, the traffic is gone)
The biggest issue that i can assume that causes this is when a car in front of you appears to slow down, some people will break more than the person in front. When breaking your distance between the car in front of you should be constant and not increasing
Trains wouldn't suffer from this problem, because they can be scheduled and coordinated. And all you need in order to sort out thr scheduling is a guy who knows how to use Microsoff Excel. Unfortunately, the ministry of transport is severely lacking in people experienced enough to know how to turn on a laptop.
It's not just being scheduled, it's the absolutely staggering capacity. A high efficiency freeway lane carries 2400 people per hour when free flowing, which drops precipitously when there's a jam - easily lower than 1000. A 6 car train can carry 1500 fairly easily, and carries exactly the same amount when over capacity. Run 15 of those an hour and that's more capacity than a perfectly flowing 9 lane each way freeway.
This is the basis of congestion pricing. By keeping road sections at just below its operational capacity at certain speed, traffic jams magically disappear
I thought i wouldnt like road engineering when I first started my degree, but seeing the role that psychology and sociology play in this field got me hooked
This happens with multiple lanes too. It's usually 2 cars driving next to one another who are completely complacent. Neither is committed to passing the other and both are driving slower than average traffic (even if only by a little). This can often create a Phantom "One Lane Only" scenario where only 1 open lane is flowing freely and the other tow lanes are trying to cram into it to move past the blockage resulting in that lane getting clogged up too, especially when another slow person gets in there and takes their sweet time passing. This happens the most when 1 large truck tries to pass another and either won't or straight up can't overtake fast enough. All of this is even worse on uneven highways with hills where a person is maintaining a specific constant pressure on their gas pedal, resulting in them going faster and then slower and then faster again with the inclines of the terrain, meanwhile the people behind them trying to maintain a constant specific speed instead have to keep making unwanted adjustments to their speed to avoid collisions in front of them or holding up others behind them (while under frustration 😅)
It would also help if people drove at least max 5 over the speed limit. Fluctuating speed is what causes bunching up. But if someone driving 4 over the speed limit is causing you to bunch up you are the problem imo
It helps to keep a decent distance to the driver in front of you, who just cant hold speed and goes between 70 and 100 kmh all the time. Keep some distance, get a permanent speed like 85 kmh. This saves you nerves and petrol and it wont cause traffic jam behind you.
No, the only way to make this work is to keep as close to the driver in front as you can. That way you will give space to the one behind you, so he can go faster as well, and so on..
Well, the "truth" is actually somewhere between the two extremes. Obviously we all perceive danger and thus the comfortable distance between us and the car in front of us differently. I have to admit, I'm on the offensive side, probably keeping too short a distance for many people. Obviously it's different based on speed, the surroundings, the traffic and not to mention, whether it's city or highway driving. I've never rear ended anybody, even though I've had a few close ones (usually when somebody was "cautiously" starting to break way sooner than was necessary, like, coming to a red light, they'd basically slow down almost to a halt almost 100 meters before the already stopped cars). One other thing to note, when I drive like that (which is almost always), I'm almost hyper aware, fully invested in the act of driving but that for me is normal, a no brainer and the way it should be. I think too many of us value being comfortable and relaxed while driving over safety and alertness. I said safety, I know, but bear with me. At least we can probably agree most people don't want to have to be hyper aware as if they are driving a realy race, being that alert to everything makes us more tired and driving is already tiring enough. Ok, but why did I say people choose that over safety? Because I (and I'd think most professional drivers) truly believe only way to drive safely is to be fully alert. So anything where you're not as alert as if you're in a race (not racing per se, but driving a bit more agressive, while still being defensive because you just have to read other drivers around you - not sure how exactly they call it, but motorcycle drivers have to drive that way) is just not safe driving. One example that happens to me waaaay too often to be just a coincidence: as I also have these things called blinkers (amazingly, they came with the base model, at no additional charge! I know - bonkers!) and I actually know how to use them, coming to a fork, I will signal lane turn waaaay before the car in front of me and I will actually make my move, already be "overtaking" them when they "decide" to do the same, only turning blinkers moments before the lane change and mirror check. Since that's the moment they realize someone is already in their newly chosen part, they will kind of jerk(?) the wheel back to their lane, all surprised. Now, you may argue they are just bad drivers and I wouldn't debate you, but I'd say they look awful lot like a "normal careful driver" and I look like the unpatient "mad" driver. And unpatient I am, unpatient for them to start driving and stop doing whatever they were doing. But in their eyes I was the one "speeding" and they were "driving carefully, i.e. slow". It's just that they also thought they're all alone in the traffic. :) EDIT: Don't worry, since I always expect them to do that, I usually slow down and flash to signal to them to make the lane change in front of me. Only way I don't do that is when I see nobody closely behind me and I realize they'll have plenty of time to make the lane change after I pass them. And I will pass them quickly, not like they would "stall" in that situation if it were reversed. Funny enough, never had that happen to me where I could have a chat with that person afterwards to really pick their brain and find out what they thought.
I wish we could redo this experiment with the instructions for the drivers to do their best to keep the same distance to the car in front as the car in back
Another thing that causes traffic congestion is when there is a queue of cars waiting for the green traffic light, the light goes green and everybody moves off 1 at a time rather than all going at once. It doesn't matter if youre the first car in the queue or the tenth, all vehicles should move once the green light shows.
Sometimes when I'm bored on the motorway I like to safely come to a full stop in the middle lane for no reason. Then move off again after about 5 seconds.
No, the number of cars is the cause of the problem. No one can drive efficiently when there is a small gap, and there must be small gaps if there are too many vehicles for the given space.
If everyone maintained good distance so they need to use their brakes and just the car roll at an optimal speed to main good spacing their would be no jam
What you really desire is for all of us to have the same brain, same aptitude and abilities, same reflexes and same driving preferences. Not possible. :) We'd need to give up driving to the cars to come even near that (again, different manufacturers might still have slightly differently behaved AIs) and I for one welcome that future. Humans just aren't cut out for dull everyday driving and that's it.
@@ddelimardriving a car is hardly a task that requires any sort of extraordinary abilities. The problem is there are too many fuckin idiots in this world. Idiots who can’t do anything right
@@jakub.kubicek I love trains, but commuting and travelling can't be left with only one mode of transport. Many cities don't have rail infrastructure so to get somewhere after you travel with train, there needs to be a way to just use roads. Self driving taxis, car/bike sharing and that last mile solutions like electric scooters are in our future (actually, electricity is what all of them will be powered by ;)).
@@nateshepardson why's that? tailgating isn't the cause for traffic in most cases, it's the sheer amount of vehicles on the road. would self driving vehicles add more cars to the road or somehow decrease the amount of cars on the road?
@@realquadmoo 1. I'm referring to traffic jams, not heavy traffic. 2. Tailgating causes pileups. Ideally you would want to be equidistant between the car in front and behind. 3. If all cars were autonomous, even heavy traffic could move at or close to freeway speeds. Traffic lights wouldn't even be necessary. 4. I'm not saying I want all autonomous cars.
If people kept proper distance there wouldn't be any phantom traffic jam. That happens because since people don't respect distance they always have to brake more than the guy before them
I love how the video shows the inevitability of traffic jams and people in the comments all started blaming bad drivers. The system is flawed, blaming individuals won’t get us anywhere.
@@danielmarsden4573 I guess they do but barely. sitting 5 extra minutes on a train is astronomically better for my blood pressure and mental health than sitting in a car constantly worrying about other people cutting me off and/or bumping into me
@@nckhed I’ve driven far more in my life than the average person my age. in the past year I’ve barely driven and my mental and physical health is better, my sense of community is better, my knowledge and experience of my city is better, my blood pressure is undoubtedly lower. my risk of being one of the 40,000 americans to die in a car wreck has plummeted. not to mention the thousands of dollars i’ve saved. nothing wrong with the occasional drive (and quite enjoyable on open roads) but i feel bad for people who have no other options cuz our country is so car-dependent 🤷🏼♂️
The way to help avoid becoming the problem is by maintaining a consistent distance away from the car two cars ahead. If they’re driving smooth you can stay smooth. If the car in front of you is inconsistent, you’ll be protecting the cars behind from their slow/fast driving
It somewhat depends on CC. Older units are a simple throttle position lock without any radar or lidar in front and most disengage under certain speed, so you have to keep an eye and manually correct. More consistent yes, but if a driver is bad at driving then even tech will have trouble countering it.
That won't help because even if the people in the test were driving the same car model they won't be able able to engage cruise control precisely at the same time which will gradually cause the phantom jam. As humans we have different reaction times and responses to any given situation.
Has nothing to do with keeping the same speed. Speed WILL fluctuate no matter what. But if people didn't tailgate, the fluctuations would ebb to nothing
@@gone4winter compilations of motorcyclists getting sent flying into the ozone layer by a small bump while they zoom down the road is some A1 youtube content
Having family that works in media you'd be shocked at the lobbying that motor industries make to ensure media doesn't talk about the goriest and surprisingly common motorcycle accidents that happen. People need to demand trains. It's what built the US, it's what keeps it's economy going. It's getting insane. @@gone4winter
@@renanramospereira333 people weren’t trading their horses for train rides back in the day. I won’t trade my truck or motorcycle for a train ride either.
It isn't really stupid, it's just a matter of too many cars being in a small space. You can address it a bit by lengthening roads out (sending them around the long way). Reducing lanes also helps as there's less merging.
@@shraka True but as unlikely as it is to cultivate conscientious driving in society, I imagine it's less likely that we are going to get roadways that make sense.
@@h378dh4uj All places that have conscientious driving have quality alternatives to driving and good road design. I don’t think you can really have one without the other.
Did they try honking
lol :) I was in a stand still traffic jam once, and got impatient and could not see what was causing it because the line was several kilometers. So I honked a few times, which is futile I did think as the car in front of you has nothing to do with it. But to my surprise the in front of me also honked, sending the honk to next car, and next car did the same and the entire cue sent the honk forward :) Right after the que started moving and we found out is was because of road work ahead. But it was really cool the cars forwarded the honk of frustration lol :)
@@a64738basically a long line of fuck yous.
@@a64738 you've got mail, lol
😊
Omg...😂 much underrated comment. That's made me lol out loud
Oh, how many times have I seen this. You are stuck in a traffic jam, you see in your navigator its end in a kilometer, you expect to see some terrible accident at the end, but... everyone just suddenly starts driving at normal speed.
its some asshole that can't drive. thats the moral of the story. press the right pedal and gtfo of the way.
I happened to me. I was stuck on 3 lane highway for 20 minutes just to see that idiots were busy looking at some parked cars with cops at the end. I couldn't believe how retarded the drivers were.
I happened to me. I was stuck on 3 lane highway for 20 minutes just to see everybody have been busy looking at some parked cars with cops at the end. I was really pissed because i was taking someone to train.
WHAT IN TARNATION IS A KILOMETER, USE FREEDOM MILES PATRIOT, YEEHAW!🫡🇺🇸🦅 *star spangled banner playing in the background*
Had this happen once in Orlando. Finally managed to get past the vehicles in front and it was empty road. A traffic jam entirely caused by one person going too slow and presumably the cars on either side matching his speed instead of driving the speed limit.
I once saw a car get on the highway and cut across three lanes of busy traffic. Everyone had to do an emergency brake behind him and three lanes of traffic were stuck 10 seconds later.
A small under-powered car full of morbidly obese people merged into a 65mph zone at about 35mph directly into the left lane in front of me going 70mph as a teenager and almost got me and everyone behind me in the left lane killed. During rush hour no less. Some people..
Skill issue
@@JB-uk7mn You’re either the person who cut across the highway or an eight year old
@@theXR228 You're forgetting the third and most probable scenario that he is the person that cut across the highway and also happens to be Lewis Hamilton so it's quite earned to see it as a skill issue from his perspective.
@@squatchjosh1131 public roads/highways are not the race tracks.
I love how this is just in everyone’s recommended 11 years later. See y’all again when this appears In our recommend 3 years later.
Lol.
it’s crazy because it pops up today right after sitting in traffic for 20 minutes expecting an accident or something, come to find out someone had broken down all the way on the shoulder some people had just wanted to slow down to look at them
was thinking about this video a few months back then it came back like ol reliable
4 days
Sounds like a plan man, see you then! Lmao
When people see a cop and suddenly everybody slows down
I was thinking this too. Blows my mind that people will pull over 3 lanes AND slow down to 20-30 below the speed limit for a cop that has someone pulled over
ON THE OTHER SIDE IF A DIVIDED HIGHWAY!!
@@dizzthenibbler4070 it's happened to me before where I thought the cop was busy attending the other guy he stopped, but then he instead chased after me
@@codyjohnson6427 that's just poor timing, and I'm talking about people who aren't speeding already, will still slow down.
Like a 65 mph and ppl will be all the way over and doing 45.
@@dizzthenibbler4070 I get the whole getting into the next lane thing, just common courtesy. But I also can't stand it when people slam on their brakes as they pass the cop. Like, are you THAT scared behind the wheel?
And there are ways to reduce phantom jams, after they have been created.
By slowing down and staying in motion as long as possible behind a traffic jam the bad stop and go can be stopped.
And it helps in not getting rear ended :)
The problem with that is that some people change lanes abruptly and some even force their way in, causing traffic to never flow smoothly
I'm doing my part!
yea that works great until someone comes up behind you doing the speed limit, slams on their brakes, and the whole chain reaction starts all over again!
Oh hey, that's what i do!
None of the people in this video are necessarily bad drivers. The test is _designed_ to cause a traffic jam. The primary issue is that they're packed too closely together (again, by design, to demonstrate that tailgating is bad).
Prevent phantom traffic jams. Keep an even distance between the cars in front of and behind you. Brake gently and minimally.
That would work if assholes didn't hog the Middle Lane of a motorway. Those are the people who create traffic jams
exactly. When coming to a 'jam', slow down so that you are still moving then they move... it will prevent the people behind you from experiencing the same 'jam'. You wont ever feel that difference being the driver that stops the jam. You still see the slow down. But you can make driving better for the people behind you.
Well, you can control the distance between you and the car in front, but there's nothing you can do about the car behind.
They drove too fast.
This makes perfects sense! I have noticed that when someone DOES leave a gap, there are people that RUSH to jump in and fill the gap just to then JAM on their brakes!
I just wish I had a helicopter option on my car for those times....
Great to see this in real life and not just in a computer simulation!
This is computers for old people.
:D
Cities Skylines if it were actually good :D
See this everyday on my commute, dude…
@@JB-uk7mnYou drive to work by going on a circular path?
@@elmojackson6621 you are retarded bro
I had a place of work where, whenever someone had an anniversary, they would put food out on a circular table, gather everyone together, give a brief speech and then tell us to dig in. No matter how many times they did it, no matter how many times I tried to tell everyone that lines need a beginning and an end, people would still form a closed-loop and then wonder why nobody was moving. It says a lot about the caliber of people I was working with for sure.
You make a good point. I've never experienced that scenario, but I imagine upon discovering the solution to an annoying problem and finding yourself ignored, that it would really get under a person's skin.
You could have roundabouts with multiple entries and exits ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In my experience, unless you continuously direct them to do otherwise, people will enter and exit from literally anywhere even on a straight table and cause chaos.
Used to do catering/serving for small-medium weddings (50-150 guests) and even when we served from the buffet, people still had to be told sometimes to get in line at the end with the salad. Then you still had retards skipping the salad, getting served an entree, and then trying to *go backwards against the line* to get the salad. If it was self-serve, it was just a free-for all with less coordination than 100 pigs trying to feed from the same trough.
@@aleshandsome3705they do, that's not the point
If there's free food involved, I think our brain goes "gimme gimme gimme" and all logic goes out the window.
You're not stuck in a traffic jam.
You ARE the traffic jam.
-Sorry boss, looks I'll be a few minutes late coming in.
-Why? What's happened?
-I'm a traffic jam.
As dum as the politician that said it.
@@tynewlin💀
"You are not bothered by the problem, you ARE being a part of the problem."
Don't worry, adding another lane will solve the traffic.
My challenge to myself in heavy traffic is to never touch my brakes. Keep a healthy following distance and release the gas when I see red in front of me. If I do it right, I’ll catch up to the car in front just as they’re starting to accelerate.
I do the same thing, keeps driving interesting. Makes it much easier being in a standard transmission. I don’t know if i could go back to automatic at this point
@@mikeoxhard3826 My Mazda has fake manual shifting, so I can do a little bit of engine breaking. Wish I had a manual sometimes.
and this selfish, uncooperative behavior during rush hour results in multiple people missing light cycles by sending a wave of late starts at each intersection AND limiting top speed to well below speed limit, further limiting the flow of traffic behind you
@@lilarrin1220 I do this on freeways; not surface streets. Hope you have a good Memorial Day weekend. I didn’t mean to get you worked up.
@@lilarrin1220 you really didn't understand anything about the experiment in the video did you ?
The year is 2024 and nothing has changed
Still waiting on self-driving cars.
I bet computers could do it better
They can but it taking a lot longer than we thought. Then you have to consider mass production and affordability.
@@kamikeserpentail3778 nah I bet it would make the problem worse. More self driving cars = more cars on the road = more traffic, and inevitably traffic jams. The only real solution to traffic is better public transportation and urban planning
It will never change unless every car is self driving. This is just human behavior.
@@aRennix the traffic being caused by humans not driving smootly
if all the cars were self-driving, and could tell each other what they were doing, traffic jams wouldnt happen
I watched a video like 10-15 years ago by some dude who claimed he solved this problem. All you gotta do is put a ton of space between you and the car in front of you, and try to maintain a consistent speed by watching the cars further ahead. The space acts as a kind of buffer that halts any waves of stopped cars rippling backwards. You don't necessarily get where you're going any faster, but it's much more engaging than just sitting in traffic, and you make the road better for everyone behind you.
I drive like this now, and I've noticed another added benefit, which is people merging, usually to get off the highway. If it's bumper to bumper, you have to stop to let a car in if they want to merge into your lane, which further halts any traffic behind you. But if you've got a ton of space in front of you, people can merge as they please with little to no impact on you or the cars behind you.
As long as I don't have anywhere to be, I absolutely love driving in traffic. It's way less boring, and it feels like I'm doing a service to everyone around me. I'm also far from the only person who does this, and it can be fun to encounter others. It's funny because if they're behind you, you end up in this almost oasis, where everyone to either side is bumper to bumper, but you've got like 50+ feet of empty road in front of and behind you lol
The problem is that the average space that can be between cars is the circumference of this circle divided by the number of cars. Meaning it is not possible for each of these cars to have enough distance to prevent jams.
I do the same. Big gap in front, and a constant slow roll, always watching not just the car in front of me but also 10+ cars down the line. So much nicer than gostopgostopgostopgostop every 3 seconds.
And you get there in the same amount of time or better.
@@timmiller1thats true. Most people want to get ahead and will take that gap as a way to beat traffic, while others are oblivious to their tail gating.
@@timmiller1 It is possible...
The road is REALLY long and the JAM is short, it could be a 20km road where at the first 10 you drive at 100km/h with tons of space, then you have 1km of driving at 5km/h bumper to bumper and then 100 km/h again for 9km.
If you just stretch the distance of the JAM to be 5 km you have solved the jam.
The problem with this approach, at least where I live (big city, traffic 24/7), is that people will just endlessly try to cut you off to get into that free space, somewhat alleviating traffic in other lanes but completely halting it in yours. Also expect people behind you to be pissed that you're letting everyone cut you (and them, by extension) off.
This only truly works if everyone, or at least most people, do it at the same time. It's the classic tragedy of the commons: some people are nice and others take advantage of them; people don't want to be taken advantage of so they stop being nice and start taking advantage of others instead; eventually everyone is trying to take advantage of everyone else, ruining the experience for everyone involved.
In the US we added these cool toll lanes that take up half of every other highway and create phantom traffic jams at every merging lane :))))))
I HATE those lanes. Just a money grab that only provides chaos.
stupid states that haven't gone 100% pay by plate yet 🤦♂️
If you live in a terrible place, sure.
@@rawman44 You mean all of California? Well, i guess that does count, actually.
Well our government has to take our money to give to Ukraine and Israel somehow
shout out to the black car on the top right for having a reaction time so slow it causes everything
0:41 is it me or is the red car pretty poor at timing as well
@@noahclark7603yea it is, I saw this video being shared as a way to prove traffic jams happen for no reason but it proves that it's human error lol
I remember seeing a comedian a long time ago who had a joke that went something like "we're all stuck in traffic because some asshole 3 miles ahead of us tapped his brakes 4 years ago."
Here in Brazil, some areas where its common for people to drive over the speed limit the traffic guys in plain clothes create the phantom jam on weekends and holidays to diminish the collisions.
"Just one more lane bro"
But this actually helps... More lanes means fewer cars per lane
A second lane and no traffic jam wouldve formed in this case.
No, the OP is correct. Traffic expands to fill additional lanes. That's why road construction has never solved traffic jams
@@fincarosa what youre referring to is called induced demand. A phenomenon in which more lanes work for a while before more and more people consider going by car filling it up again. That also got its limits cause at some point there arent any more people or cars. Its also less of a factor if good alternatives to the car exist. So in cases where roads are still clocked even though a good train, tram and metro exist an additional lane can solve that problem permanently. Thats a big factor in the US in addition to very cheap fuel.
@@fincarosa By this logic, reducing lanes wouldn't make traffic worse, but it does. More lanes does help, you absolute oaf. Just because it doesn't eliminate the problem to 0 doesn't mean it doesn't help
Back in 1983 - when computers were new, I attended a Civil Engineering seminar and a visiting professor introduced us to a computer model simulator (very rudimentary) on traffic flow. Everything was doing just fine and all the dots were moving at the same speed. He then introduced a car hitting their brakes, and a backup formed and propagated "up stream', showing all the cars had to slow down and even stop. He then stopped a car, that was worse. He then let the cars go at different speeds and that made it even worse. This is cool to see it with real cars and of course, we see it every day.
So glad I found this! Now I can use it as a visual aid when explaining this phenomenon to people.
I hope you also explain the rest. on its own this is somewhat misleading.
@@MusikCassettewhat rest? this is exactly how most traffic jams happen, doesn't even matter how many lanes
I love the fact they’re using Vampire Weekend for the background music. Definitely from 2013
It's perfect, yeah.
i just stumbled on this video and was going to comment the same thing haha
We called it the slinky effect when hiking in the miltary. Our formation was determined by height, tall guys in front, short guys in back. Taller people having a longer stride would minimize this effect but it would still happen, resulting in lots of running instead of walking if you were in the back.
The instructors made us swap order once so the tall guys would understand the importance of keeping a good pace and not stopping/slowing down.
I see this every day because I live on a high floor next to a major road. It always makes me have a fun time watching it go backwards. Sometimes the traffic is light enough that it resolves, but sometimes it never resolves. It's one of the biggest problems with human drivers in dense traffic, but artificial drivers are no better (yet).
Artificial drivers will sadly never be better enough for it to matter, as this is a factor moreso of traffic density than individual bad decisions. Even a perfect AI driver will have to brake slightly when someone else is merging in, and with perfect cohesion between cars that still creates a backward-propagating wave. If the distance between vehicles is too small, the wave will persist and interfere with other waves to create pockets of traffic.
@@deadcarbonboy just not braking when the car in front is braking then accelerating. So you can very well stop some waves if you have even a normal distance margin
@@este_marco that's what I'm saying, you can't not brake when the vehicle density is too high. Traffic is caused by number of cars on the road, not solely by bad drivers
is your pfp the codepen logo?
@@deadcarbonboy 90% of ppl have a good margin to improve. i legit think useless traffic slow down can be outright removed from existence if we all learned and applied the good behaviors for good flowing traffic.
As one of the other commenters suggests, dont ever stop, instead creep. This means give lots of space to the car in front of you, because unlike in this simulation, there is normally a lot of space behind you on the road, meaning any space you take up wont be amplified as much. In addition it also allows for the easier merging of other lanes into yours, if you take the sacrifice of going slightly slower, you will have a more calm time driving, and more space for safety
Which is why it is important that you always try to break LESS than the person in front of you, because if consecutive people start slowing down at the same rate or more intensely, the traffic jam grows instead of dissipating.
The slow reactions of setting off again also cause the propogation. The fact that everyone only seems to think about putting it in gear once the car that's already 5 metres away from them starts moving, is allowing the wave to keep going. If the vehicle in front of you is slowing down you should slow right down and aim to keep moving until you are about to have a crash, to smooth out the motion for the cars behind you
YES! Thank you, I was waiting for this comment. I believe you are exactly right. And, once stopped, you need immediately begin moving your car the moment that the car in front of you starts moving. Pay attention to the cars ahead of the car in front of you, so that you can time the beginning of your car's movement to precisely when the car in front of you starts moving.
@@tedz2usayep. You start moving with the car in front of the car thats in front of you only to have to press the brake again because the guy in front of you never started to move when he should have 😅
This thread is great advice if you wanna cause a rear-end in a traffic jam! 😂👍
Yes, in theory would remedy the problem, but in the real world it's extremely risky due to the unpredictable reactions of the driver in front. For instance they might feel pressured by your actions and choose irrational reactions like brake-checking you!
But even without slow reacting and vengeance seeking drivers in front of you, this way of driving will quickly result in an accident, because it requires maximum alertness, extreme focus and lightning fast reactions, which will exhaust your mental resources in no time!
@@LRM12o8 Ive been doing this for years with no problems. We are talking about standstill speeds here.
@@LRM12o8 the fact driving like this is considered an extreme level of alertness shows that most people shouldn't be on the road at all. Driving at any speed for any reason should require this level of attention.
This is actually a great illustration
And jus realized its 11 yrs old too. Woow.
45 years ago they showed us videos that were exactly like this back when they were all on film strip, before VHS or any of that replaced eall of it, we saw lots of these examples in class. They were all pretty much the same and hasn't changed over the years.
Japan had the best videos on the subject and the best studies that I saw.
@@ottotater2787 wow. Fascinating
The rise of US highways post-war actually created a counterargument all its own, so much that the UK began advocating against US urban development, which is entirely car-centric. So yes, this has been around for many decades already.
Now it's 2024 and people complain that we didn't have the foresight to predict traffic, but we had all the information years ago. Everyone was just too shortsighted to acknowledge it wasn't the solution.
@@driftofair9691 greed and bad intent
This video should have been titled: “Researchers prove people can’t drive”
Shouldn’t*
Including you by the way
@ based on what specifically?
@@DoggosAndJiuJitsu well see, i assumed you are also people.
@ I wondered if you’d make that your claim. Thank you for the helpful contribution.
We have a transfer lane from a Westbound highway to a North in my area and this happens all the time there. You can easily take it at 40 (recommended speed by signage) but, due to a minor chicane in the road most slow to 30 or 25 causing a minor jam on busy days.
Wow this is such a fascinating simple way to illustrate this
Based on how recent all of these top comments are, I'm guessing the UA-cam algorithm had another episode, and everybody randomly got reccomented this 12 year old video at around the same time
how has no one pointed out at 0:31 the dude on the far side literally stopped
No?
@@ayberkdemir top right at 0:31.5, not exactly 0:31
@@crispypear8183 Oh I see it, the black car right? That's probably when the jam first starts
0:32 look at that one who stopped
Yep, retards like this are why traffic exists
Asian
@SMITHOMATIC what
@@SMITHOMATICProbably was you or your inbred family members
@@SMITHOMATIC 😂😂😂
So, California drivers. Y'all make your own traffic jams more than ive ever seen anywhere else. It's a miracle you can get anywhere around San Diego
That’s why I always try to maintain a slower speed in a traffic jam to ensure the people behind me don’t have to break
Yes, I try to avoid this by keeping a little longer distance to car in front and only slow down slowly.
I always keep a larger gap so that I can keep moving without breaking. Then some fucking idiot moves into the gap I'm maintaining and causes the whole nicely moving lane to stop. If people just stayed in their own lanes, kept a reasonable distance, just let their foot off the accelerator to maintain the distance not the break, we'd all get to where we need to go!
its brake
If you have a larger gap, that means someone else must have a smaller gap. There is only so much space. Giving yourself more time to react is the same thing as giving someone behind you less time to react.
@timmiller1 In an artificial closed loop like this, that's true, but real roads aren't closed loops! The "2 second rule" was invented (like 50 years ago when there was 1/4 of the traffic on the roads) to prevent this situation: everyone drives with 2 seconds gap to the car in front, this allows for human reaction time and gives you the buffer space to use when someone in front makes a mistake or has to avoid/accommodate some unexpected obstruction -- they brake, you have to brake a little less, the car behind you a little less, ½ a mile further back the problem has gone and nobody knows anything happened, the road flows non-stop and everyone can enter the road as they need to (showing that "the road can only contain a certain number of cars" is a laughable spurious argument). If you drive close, as some do who use that ridiculous faulty argument ("you drive with a 'huge' gap, you prevent people getting on the road"), then when someone in front slows, you have to slow more, the one behind might have to touch the brakes, the one behind that brakes harder, ½ a mile further back it's a stationary jam and nobody else can enter the road possibly causing traffic jams on previous parts of the road network.
I've always noticed in light traffic on freeways, even when there aren't "traffic jams", vehicles don't spread out. There are packs and voids. What happens is slower cars and large trucks are going at or lesser than the speed limit and form the front of the packs. Behind them are cars that would like to go faster but either adjust their speed to that speed, or are slowed until they can filter through to the front and then speed up to their normal pace, until get to the back of the next pack. These collections are usually about 20 car lengths or so in size with cars only separated by a few lengths, but the spaces between the packs can be enormous, like a quarter mile or half a mile. If you're driving a little over the average speed, you get through one of those packs, and for the next five minutes in the void, it's like you're the only one on the freeway.
This would be solved by all semis only being in the rightmost one or two lanes, and the passing lane being left open just for passing. Unfortunately, literally everyone on the road thinks the speed they are going is the universal rule, and anyone that wants to go faster should go pound sand so they block the passing lane or drive anywhere they want.
Semis are already *technically* supposed to be and are required to be in the right lane when traveling and only use the left lanes when passing. An issue I've seen regularly is when a tractor can only reach 70 mph, and wants to pass several other vehicles, often other tractors, going 65. Results in a 4 minute long "Pass" in the passing lane. Major traffic jam. You're correct though, if people understood to stick to the rightmost lane any time there's space to do so, this would never really be an issue. They don't, for some reason, and that's why we can't have nice things.
@@KeterMalkuth You're both right except the Move Over Law only applies to freeways. It does not apply to any roads that have left turns. Semis and heavy trucks should be ticketed more for hogging the 3rd or 4th lane away from the left shoulder. No excuse for it.
I've had Jeeps yell at me, pass me while I'm going 10 over, Pass me really close to rubbing my back quarter just to cut me off with their right signal on, so going 20+ over the limit. This is on a two lane *residential* area lol. I just honk at them when they run up close like that and show them my left signal, as I am turning left! Also I never drive close to or beside other people, so they have zero reason to harass me like that.
Where I live, we call the event of trucks ignoring the keep right rule and slowly passing eachother "elephant races"
It's the end of any 2-lane speedway
We need to introduce HEAVY ticketing to people who are cruising less than the speed limit in the passing lanes.
@@KeterMalkuth I remember I once saw a semi try to pass another semi in the right lane. He crept along, taking 3 business days to get alongside the other guy, only to lose his momentum or whatever and just end up going the exact same speed as the truck in the right lane for like 4 miles. Backed up a lot of traffic behind him with that stunt lol
What I wonder is can this be fixed? If one driver starts driving slow enough that he never actually needs to stop for the jam then the jam would eventually be solved until it happens again, right?
To elaborate: what I mean is that the guy in front of you is driving normally, when he reaches the jam he has to slow down and eventually stop because the person in front of him did so. You see him slowing down to a stop but you're going slow enough that by the time you reach him, he has already started moving again. Now you have never had to stop and all the people behind you didn't have to stop either because they had to match your speed, after the guy in front of you starts going you simply match his speed and now there's no jam (until it happens again).
That works in theory. In reality when I'm trying to do this - there's always someone from the behind who would use the chance to jump 2-3 cars ahead and merge right in front of you. The most of the people still have too much from the monkeys in their behaviour.
It only works on a 1-line road, where there's no possibility to overtake you.
i get what the experiment is trying to do, but at 0:32, the black car on the upper right is clearly not paying attention or something.
I think that's the point, someone is on their phone and it starts the traffic jam
That's the point. Phantom jams are caused by a car that's late or are not following the flow of the traffic smoothly when it actually is
Yeah they randomly stopped
@@Azukaaedoesn't sound very phantom like, if there's a very obvious cause for it lol
@@TMeek94 Don't ask me, ask the one who gave name to it. It's just a name anyway
Thank you for recommending this random video, UA-cam.
This is a great visual!
Driving, the one and only thing we expect everyone to do perfectly all the time
Almost everyone on the roads drives like an idiot
the margin for error is slim so good driving is pretty important, more so than for brushing your teeth
@@ethangrant8736which must mean you probably do as well
@@howardmckeown7187Most people don't know how to brush teeth. And more likely, you're already doing it too much.
I do it perfectly. Everybody else is doing it wrong 😆
This should be mandatory viewing before licenses are issued
Seriously tho. The German driving school is already on average 7 months long, and the road experience is generally much better here than anywhere else, but this still needs to be part of the mandatory theory classes
it looks like a bbc circle ident with the cars going round the cone circle
And this, folks, is why your best bet is to do your best to never stop moving, leave enough of a gap to do that and you'll buffer the jam so it's easier on you and helps the people behind you (if they let you, or better do the same thing)
Except people see that gap and then cut in... because you left that gap for them, not for you so you wouldn't have to stop every 10ft.
@hikingphotog I've left a gap for years and it's really not an issue. Some do, but I'm talking a gap of like 5 car lengths, so you just tap the accelerator a few seconds later.
Also, it's not like they're getting there any faster than you and they're not slowing you down. Try it sometime, it's a far far less stressful way of spending your time in a car.
One of the big benefits of self-driving cars is their ability to achieve full speed in this scenario without stops or traffic snakes.
Now hand them all a cell phone to watch Netflix on and watch it come to a standstill LIKE EVERYWHERE I DRIVE
what was the average speed of this cars before, and after? (I mean if you have more space in front of you, you can go faster, but then slow down)
This is why following distance is key. With 4-6 car lengths of space you can ideally coast when you notice slower traffic. If you do need breaks or need to stop or behind a driver who overuses their breaks then add following distance or change lanes
How are you gonna coast with 4-6 car lengths when traffic is so dense you have 1 car length?
We found the old man 👴
I stayed in a high rise hotel with a great view of a busy Atlanta freeway. It was fascinating that I could watch a single car do something dumb, and up to three lanes would come to a stop in seconds, and it could stay that way for nearly an hour.
Man the rail stans are just having a field day with this one.
We sure are :)
In the days before camera drones.
I know how to fix this. What if you just connected all the cars together and made them run on a designated schedule and stop at specific locations, no traffic jams!
You could make it produce less pollution by having it run off electricity from some kind of over head wires. Then make it more efficient and produce less micro plastics using metal rails!
The Automotive Centipede
How to reinvent the bus, only worse.
it never gets old 😂😂😂
@@driftofair9691train
Same for traffic lights. A lot of the time, the first car starts driving, then the second, then the third. But if just everyone would start driving at the same time, the line would move as a whole.
But you cannot just assume every driver is going to move at the same time since they aren't a hivemind.
@GeorgeMonet Exactly. And most people are just slow.
This happens on my route to work. A 4 lane highway splits with 2 lanes left, 2 lanes right. I need to go right. Our country drives on the left side of the road, so right lane is fast lane.
The 2 right lanes are insanely slow up until the split, and then drive at the speed limit as soon as you're past the split. I realised it's because of this "imaginary" traffic jam, where the cars are backed up to a km before the turn for no apparent reason, then it magically clears up at/after the turn.
To fix this: I drive in the second to left lane up until the traffic clears, then merge right. No one has to slow down behind me, and the traffic jam doesn't exist anymore for anyone.
I learned similar in cities skylines, one bad intersection can cause city wide traffic, and something as simple as rerouting, a fly over or deletion of the intersection can do wonders for traffic, I’m not an engineer but you can learn a lot from that game
Yes I sure hope it taught you the importance of higher capacity transportation in order to move people more efficiently. (I’m actually not sure if the first game does but I know CS2 does)
0:39 and 0:54: It's as if the driver of the red car is deliberately screwing everyone over by taking an eternity to start accelerating each time
TRAINS
WHERE?
Exactly that’s what I’m saying
1-2 professional train conductors hauling dozens-hundreds of people at once > hundreds of people with different driving styles operating their own vehicles
@@samsonsson328 Yeah, the US isn't some tiny country, though. You can drive one or two hours in your country and end up in another country. Over here, a two-hour drive gets us in another county within the same state. We need personal transportation over here. We do have public transportation like buses and trains, but they're better suited for dense cities. We have areas in this country that are so sparse that a train system wouldn't be very feasible.
Just gotta drive an hour and a half to the train, only for it to take me to another destination 50 miles from where I need to be :P
wasn't expecting hear vampire weekend lol
Thank you! I recognised it but couldn't remember the title, artist or enough lyrics to Google it and it would have driven me mad lol
@kutanra Sure, I believe they used "One (Blake's Got A New Face)" for the first song and "Campus" for the second.
Just dropped by to say, WHOGIVAFUKABADA TRAFFIC JAMMA.
I've often noticed that the leading car in this phenomenon, mainly on a highway, is an elderly person who is driving 5-10 below the speed limit. Especially when the lane turns into a popular off ramp.
Spent 45 minutes in a jam the other day, that went for about 2 kilometers. At the end...nothing. Went from 5 kmh back to the 100 speed limit and I was fuming.
1. Don't over-brake or be stopped longer than you need to.
2. Watch the car ahead of the car in front of you, and attempt to start moving forward when they do.
3. Eliminate lag.
3. The harder you accelerate, the slower you'll have to brake when you catch up.
4. Strive for slow continuous motion.
Eliminating lag and watching the car in front you to go at the same time is impossible. The average person is physiologically too unintelligent to conceptualize a simple system like this. Their brains are literally incapable of producing thoughts that complex.
A cure to this is start moving when the 2nd car infront of you starts moving.
Ofcouse stop tailgating but that entails people not using the space to cut lanes. Maybe a laser projector that just warns anyone from cutting infront of you by marking the space in red. It also lets you know if youre tailgating(sometimes i forget and be back by only 2 cars whereas i should be back by 3).
Also introduce micro fines using camera and AI technology, eg lane cutting just to join a faster lane and not go towards an exit or not coming in from an entry should be fined .25 cents automatically. Going slow on the fast lane, 10 cent per 3 miles. Not breaking away from a Wolfpack, 1 cent per mile, drafting too close, 2 cent per mile. Etc. we got the technology to solve this. Maybe try this on two expressway lanes on the highway first.
Also maybe some sort of scheduling notification system that says "Hey according to your calender you're selected to be part of traffic group 3.30(the time) you should leave within 10 mins to join your group. Yea you can skip this if you want but maybe you dont get access to the expressway lanes like i mentioned before.
Also obv autopilot syncing. That automatically collectively controls flow of traffic.
You'll see all the tech i mentioned get inevitably get implemented. But i feel like by then we'll have teleportation.
that micro fines thing is the goofiest shit i'm so sorry. i get what you're trying to say but this is not worth it. we do not have the infrastructure for that. cars will drive themselves within our lifetimes anyways. besides, would you like us to live a dystopian reality where cameras individually track every person driving and cost them money for not being robots?
@@scubasteve6175 might just be the cameras in your car that do it for you. Again, it would be voluntary. You can just choose to not use the expressway lanes like I mentioned.
So many people against tailgating here. It's annoying sure. It's unsafe for reaction time sure, but it does not make traffic slower...
@@pineappleparty1624 it does. That distance allows smooth slowing down and speeding up. Allows time for correcting the jam. Tailgating makes harsher slow downs and a even harsher chain reaction.
@@snitox If anything, it would just make those slow pokes, poke even slower behind someone breaking a little harder. Oh well.
This is why adding more lanes has so little benefit after a point as well - adding lanes adds interactions exponentially
Meanwhile just two train tracks has ridiculously high capacity, and 4 is just unfathomable.
Always love how it moves like an accordion
This will honestly be one of the best bonuses to self-driving cars. You'll probably save 10s of minutes in rush hour
This is why rail should be priority
You can't have rail everywhere. There will always be highways.
@@Stratus41298 true but highways cost 10x to maintain with no revenu to offset the costs of damage from overloaded modern vehicles that weighs in at almost 2 ton when empty.( ps this is a north american thing). So for long distance travel like a 4+hour long trip the train should be the main way. But for short distance travel a car or other means like a bike or tram/bus. Lets build society for humans again not just long distance cars.
Yeah, no matter which way you look at it, individual vehicles for personal transport are worse for society overall AND for individuals. A car-based society is a monstrous drain on society; walkable and bikeable cities with public transport have much less space wasted on roads and parking lots/spaces, are much quieter, have much lower road costs, much lower overall costs for individuals who don't need to own and maintain their own cars...
nah im never getting on public transportation again
@@coolguyx14 man that's not very cool of you.
On busy roads, with more than one lane, this is often caused by people signalling and pulling out without checking space, forcing those in the lane to brake suddenly.
Or those in the lane slowing to let someone pull out.
In a single carriage roads, simply over braking, not keeping to a constant speed, and everyone doing that at different times. Yes I can cruise at 40, 50 or 60 mph, but naturally I may sometimes be a few mph quicker or slowers based on curves in road or hills, and if the person behind me has a car that manages slightly different to mine the gap closes.
Additionally it is caused by someone keeping to the speed limit, or safe speed, and the person behind going the 2%+2 over the speed limit, or slightly faster than what the other considers a safe speed for the road/conditions.
All of these contribute to these phantom traffic jams.
Like they say, everyone drives slightly differently, and that causes the queue.
Not tailgating, as trying not to tailgate means slowing down.
These traffic jams are rarely caused by a normal driver/vehicle going ridiculously under the speed limit. But many seem to think that they must always drive at the speed limit, which is why around where I live - mainly country roads with the derestricted sign, many take the corners too fast and end up in ditches as they don't drive for road, they drive for the speed.
Yes, it is annoying when I know I can safely go 50 (sometimes 60) on a section of the road, but as they are usually short sections staying at 40 behind someone adds seconds to my journey not minutes.
On Motorways there are always morons who hog the middle lane and refuse to change lanes, so when you are in a lane approaching a slower vehicle, you have to pull into the middle lane cause the lane hog to break and then others behind to break which causes phantom traffic jams
@starlight122012 how to say you didn't read my comment without saying you didn't read my comment.
This my comment was nothing about lane hogging, get a life.
STOP HARASSING ME.
@@tkralva.6668 How is one reply harassing you, you silly snowflake?
You mentioned a road with more than one lane, maybe be more specific on that, because that is ambiguous.
My comment is still valid regarding lane changes due to not enough space, yes I did read your comment.
@@tkralva.6668 A single reply to your public comment is NOT harassment, you big baby. What a whiny brat.
story of my life this is.
Sad life. Let’s all take buses and trains and relax and never have to worry about traffic again (if we all stop driving and use higher capacity alternatives, the traffic is gone)
The biggest issue that i can assume that causes this is when a car in front of you appears to slow down, some people will break more than the person in front. When breaking your distance between the car in front of you should be constant and not increasing
The background song is campus by vampire weekend
Trains wouldn't suffer from this problem, because they can be scheduled and coordinated. And all you need in order to sort out thr scheduling is a guy who knows how to use Microsoff Excel. Unfortunately, the ministry of transport is severely lacking in people experienced enough to know how to turn on a laptop.
Trains are literally made of this problem, just a bunch of tailgater wagons
It's not just being scheduled, it's the absolutely staggering capacity. A high efficiency freeway lane carries 2400 people per hour when free flowing, which drops precipitously when there's a jam - easily lower than 1000. A 6 car train can carry 1500 fairly easily, and carries exactly the same amount when over capacity. Run 15 of those an hour and that's more capacity than a perfectly flowing 9 lane each way freeway.
@@rizizum No, because all of the wagons start and stop at roughly the same time, so it completely avoids the accordion effect.
@@klondike3112 no its just a big accordion, all the wagons are in a single traffic jam
@@rizizum what the hell are you talking about 😂
Myth busters did this as well. I think they found out the road length and number of cars ratio
Does this neglect to consider the shitness of drivers ratio?
@@BrandNewByxor hahaha excellent point
This is the basis of congestion pricing. By keeping road sections at just below its operational capacity at certain speed, traffic jams magically disappear
Or in other words, increase capacity and gone are the problems.
@@Asto508 That's the opposite of what they said
@@Norsilca How so?
@@Asto508 They're talking about reducing usage, not increasing capacity
@@Asto508just one more lane bro and congestion will be solved
I thought i wouldnt like road engineering when I first started my degree, but seeing the role that psychology and sociology play in this field got me hooked
As a road engineer I sure hope you’re familiar with induced demand
This happens with multiple lanes too. It's usually 2 cars driving next to one another who are completely complacent. Neither is committed to passing the other and both are driving slower than average traffic (even if only by a little). This can often create a Phantom "One Lane Only" scenario where only 1 open lane is flowing freely and the other tow lanes are trying to cram into it to move past the blockage resulting in that lane getting clogged up too, especially when another slow person gets in there and takes their sweet time passing. This happens the most when 1 large truck tries to pass another and either won't or straight up can't overtake fast enough.
All of this is even worse on uneven highways with hills where a person is maintaining a specific constant pressure on their gas pedal, resulting in them going faster and then slower and then faster again with the inclines of the terrain, meanwhile the people behind them trying to maintain a constant specific speed instead have to keep making unwanted adjustments to their speed to avoid collisions in front of them or holding up others behind them (while under frustration 😅)
It would also help if people drove at least max 5 over the speed limit.
Fluctuating speed is what causes bunching up. But if someone driving 4 over the speed limit is causing you to bunch up you are the problem imo
It helps to keep a decent distance to the driver in front of you, who just cant hold speed and goes between 70 and 100 kmh all the time.
Keep some distance, get a permanent speed like 85 kmh.
This saves you nerves and petrol and it wont cause traffic jam behind you.
No, the only way to make this work is to keep as close to the driver in front as you can. That way you will give space to the one behind you, so he can go faster as well, and so on..
Micla None you still a fucking idiot?
@@miclanone955 And then the first vehicle has to make an emergency stop and you got 30 cars piled up. Well done Ms. Intelligence.
Well, the "truth" is actually somewhere between the two extremes. Obviously we all perceive danger and thus the comfortable distance between us and the car in front of us differently.
I have to admit, I'm on the offensive side, probably keeping too short a distance for many people. Obviously it's different based on speed, the surroundings, the traffic and not to mention, whether it's city or highway driving. I've never rear ended anybody, even though I've had a few close ones (usually when somebody was "cautiously" starting to break way sooner than was necessary, like, coming to a red light, they'd basically slow down almost to a halt almost 100 meters before the already stopped cars).
One other thing to note, when I drive like that (which is almost always), I'm almost hyper aware, fully invested in the act of driving but that for me is normal, a no brainer and the way it should be. I think too many of us value being comfortable and relaxed while driving over safety and alertness. I said safety, I know, but bear with me.
At least we can probably agree most people don't want to have to be hyper aware as if they are driving a realy race, being that alert to everything makes us more tired and driving is already tiring enough. Ok, but why did I say people choose that over safety? Because I (and I'd think most professional drivers) truly believe only way to drive safely is to be fully alert. So anything where you're not as alert as if you're in a race (not racing per se, but driving a bit more agressive, while still being defensive because you just have to read other drivers around you - not sure how exactly they call it, but motorcycle drivers have to drive that way) is just not safe driving.
One example that happens to me waaaay too often to be just a coincidence: as I also have these things called blinkers (amazingly, they came with the base model, at no additional charge! I know - bonkers!) and I actually know how to use them, coming to a fork, I will signal lane turn waaaay before the car in front of me and I will actually make my move, already be "overtaking" them when they "decide" to do the same, only turning blinkers moments before the lane change and mirror check. Since that's the moment they realize someone is already in their newly chosen part, they will kind of jerk(?) the wheel back to their lane, all surprised. Now, you may argue they are just bad drivers and I wouldn't debate you, but I'd say they look awful lot like a "normal careful driver" and I look like the unpatient "mad" driver. And unpatient I am, unpatient for them to start driving and stop doing whatever they were doing. But in their eyes I was the one "speeding" and they were "driving carefully, i.e. slow". It's just that they also thought they're all alone in the traffic. :)
EDIT: Don't worry, since I always expect them to do that, I usually slow down and flash to signal to them to make the lane change in front of me. Only way I don't do that is when I see nobody closely behind me and I realize they'll have plenty of time to make the lane change after I pass them. And I will pass them quickly, not like they would "stall" in that situation if it were reversed. Funny enough, never had that happen to me where I could have a chat with that person afterwards to really pick their brain and find out what they thought.
I wish we could redo this experiment with the instructions for the drivers to do their best to keep the same distance to the car in front as the car in back
Or just try to maintain the initial following distance in front.
This whole country is addicted to driving so why can’t we redo the experiment
Another thing that causes traffic congestion is when there is a queue of cars waiting for the green traffic light, the light goes green and everybody moves off 1 at a time rather than all going at once. It doesn't matter if youre the first car in the queue or the tenth, all vehicles should move once the green light shows.
Yes. I do this, but it requires leaving enough space to be able to start driving even if the car in front doesn't
you can't do this if the guy in front of you doesn't go.
@@16m49x3 leaving extra space can cause problems for the people behind you if they're trying to get in a lane that starts close to the light.
@@Scroolewse you can if you have a little room
@@16m49x3 leave too much space and someone behind you can't get into the left turn lane.
"with this many cars tiny problems get magnified up, it's really no one's fault"
"You mean I can blame just one or two people?"
Sometimes when I'm bored on the motorway I like to safely come to a full stop in the middle lane for no reason. Then move off again after about 5 seconds.
So we’re agreed that speeding isn’t the problem but driving too slow is
errhmmm actually chuddie arbitrary speed limits are good because uuuuuuuuuuhhhhhh we say they are okay????? now shut up and pay your ticket, MANIAC!!!
@@astphy Looks more like the slow pokes are cause traffic jams though.
They should have gone up to the people who brake first and made it very clear they specifically are the reason we have traffic.
No, the number of cars is the cause of the problem. No one can drive efficiently when there is a small gap, and there must be small gaps if there are too many vehicles for the given space.
If everyone maintained good distance so they need to use their brakes and just the car roll at an optimal speed to main good spacing their would be no jam
What you really desire is for all of us to have the same brain, same aptitude and abilities, same reflexes and same driving preferences. Not possible. :) We'd need to give up driving to the cars to come even near that (again, different manufacturers might still have slightly differently behaved AIs) and I for one welcome that future. Humans just aren't cut out for dull everyday driving and that's it.
Duh
@@ddelimardriving a car is hardly a task that requires any sort of extraordinary abilities. The problem is there are too many fuckin idiots in this world. Idiots who can’t do anything right
@@ddelimar Or just use trains, let their cars mechanically "communicate" with one another and problem solved.
@@jakub.kubicek I love trains, but commuting and travelling can't be left with only one mode of transport. Many cities don't have rail infrastructure so to get somewhere after you travel with train, there needs to be a way to just use roads. Self driving taxis, car/bike sharing and that last mile solutions like electric scooters are in our future (actually, electricity is what all of them will be powered by ;)).
GCP Grey jad an excellent video on this. I don't tailgate because I don't want to be that guy that starts the jam
Yeah except he said self driving cars would fix everything.
@@realquadmoo no reason to believe they won't dramatically improve driving conditions
@@nateshepardson why's that? tailgating isn't the cause for traffic in most cases, it's the sheer amount of vehicles on the road. would self driving vehicles add more cars to the road or somehow decrease the amount of cars on the road?
@@realquadmoo 1. I'm referring to traffic jams, not heavy traffic. 2. Tailgating causes pileups. Ideally you would want to be equidistant between the car in front and behind. 3. If all cars were autonomous, even heavy traffic could move at or close to freeway speeds. Traffic lights wouldn't even be necessary. 4. I'm not saying I want all autonomous cars.
@@nateshepardson if you want this crazy autonomous pod idea to work it needs to be all or nothing
If people kept proper distance there wouldn't be any phantom traffic jam. That happens because since people don't respect distance they always have to brake more than the guy before them
I love how the video shows the inevitability of traffic jams and people in the comments all started blaming bad drivers.
The system is flawed, blaming individuals won’t get us anywhere.
Nope. It's entirely possible to avoid this. Stop making excuses for bad drivers.
@@lucasgamernelson989precisely my face when I speed by all these people stuck in traffic trying to make it better. How? Train :) 💅
Trains>cars
Cant park a train in my garage
@@LordRambo Take a bus to the train station
@@ranindersingh9798 Can't park a bus in my garage.
@@ranindersingh9798 what train station and what bus
I don't see them except in the largest cities here
@@LordRambo You can park a cycle in your garage
CGP Grey be like:
He only said stuff but this actually shows it
It all comes down to this.
Why are you surprised the car in front of you is stopping/going?
Who tf is this discount james may?
trains don’t have traffic jams
“This train is delayed due to delays to the train infont”
Yeah they do.
@@danielmarsden4573 I guess they do but barely. sitting 5 extra minutes on a train is astronomically better for my blood pressure and mental health than sitting in a car constantly worrying about other people cutting me off and/or bumping into me
@@MrStrickland90 Sounds like it's a good thing that you don't drive.
@@nckhed I’ve driven far more in my life than the average person my age. in the past year I’ve barely driven and my mental and physical health is better, my sense of community is better, my knowledge and experience of my city is better, my blood pressure is undoubtedly lower. my risk of being one of the 40,000 americans to die in a car wreck has plummeted. not to mention the thousands of dollars i’ve saved. nothing wrong with the occasional drive (and quite enjoyable on open roads) but i feel bad for people who have no other options cuz our country is so car-dependent 🤷🏼♂️
@@nckhed so yea, it’s a good thing i don’t drive 😌 (i still do once in a while though)
When I'm in a traffic jam I take pleasure in staying in the slow lane and leaving many car lengths in front of me.
it's cos people speed up so quick, ofcourse you'll have this problem, having a good space in front of you stops unnecessary stopping
The way to help avoid becoming the problem is by maintaining a consistent distance away from the car two cars ahead. If they’re driving smooth you can stay smooth. If the car in front of you is inconsistent, you’ll be protecting the cars behind from their slow/fast driving
If more people used cruise control this wouldnt happen. I can’t live without it
It somewhat depends on CC. Older units are a simple throttle position lock without any radar or lidar in front and most disengage under certain speed, so you have to keep an eye and manually correct. More consistent yes, but if a driver is bad at driving then even tech will have trouble countering it.
It's never hard for me to maintain speed until i'm driving near a cop, then it's impossible to not gradually start speeding.
That won't help because even if the people in the test were driving the same car model they won't be able able to engage cruise control precisely at the same time which will gradually cause the phantom jam. As humans we have different reaction times and responses to any given situation.
not just cruise control but an Adaptive Cruise Control. it's a God send I tell you.
Has nothing to do with keeping the same speed. Speed WILL fluctuate no matter what. But if people didn't tailgate, the fluctuations would ebb to nothing
Another reason why trains are better
Womp womp, I’ll ride my motorcycle and lane split every day before I ride a train in the us
@@gone4winter compilations of motorcyclists getting sent flying into the ozone layer by a small bump while they zoom down the road is some A1 youtube content
@@foulelements you like seeing people get hurt? That’s fucked up.
Having family that works in media you'd be shocked at the lobbying that motor industries make to ensure media doesn't talk about the goriest and surprisingly common motorcycle accidents that happen. People need to demand trains. It's what built the US, it's what keeps it's economy going. It's getting insane. @@gone4winter
@@renanramospereira333 people weren’t trading their horses for train rides back in the day. I won’t trade my truck or motorcycle for a train ride either.
00:34 it all started here because of that black car slowing down to almost stopping for no reason
You have a sharp eye! I never would have caught that
Paid actor duh
As everyone's favorite hexagon loving, glasses wearing robot calls it: A Traffic Snake.
the last thing I expected today was seeing Cillian Murphy explaining Phantom Traffic Jams
The fact that drivers need a live demonstration to prove it means that it will never change. You cant fix stupid.
It isn't really stupid, it's just a matter of too many cars being in a small space. You can address it a bit by lengthening roads out (sending them around the long way). Reducing lanes also helps as there's less merging.
@@shraka True but as unlikely as it is to cultivate conscientious driving in society, I imagine it's less likely that we are going to get roadways that make sense.
@@h378dh4uj All places that have conscientious driving have quality alternatives to driving and good road design. I don’t think you can really have one without the other.