Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Friday December 15 2017, @07:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the automate-that-already dept.

Gotta keep 'em separated:

When unexplained traffic jams happen, says an MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) study, you can probably blame tailgaters. The researchers say that if drivers kept an even distance between cars rather than driving too close to the vehicle in front, traffic flow would remain even. This "bilateral control," could double the speed of the average vehicle on busy highways.
...
This ideal is very different from what is the norm in most thinking about traffic, especially by those stuck in it. Drivers (and, consequently, vehicle control systems) tend to be looking ever forward, responding only to what's ahead and largely ignoring what's behind. Thus, in stop-and-go or slow-and-go situations (traffic jams), each vehicle reacts to the vehicle in front, causing intermittent slowdowns or stops (jams) in wave-like patterns. When vehicles are working to maintain equal distances both from the car in front and the vehicle behind, the MIT paper contends, these wave patterns are minimized and traffic flows more smoothly.

Maintaining even spacing facilitates lane changes and merges as well.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @09:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @09:25PM (#610478)

    Meh. I've stopped using the rear-view mirror in my car. I hate tailgaters, but for whatever reason this year has been especially bad.

    Every time I'd look into the rear-view mirror, all I'd see would be the blinding headlights of the Ford F-Teen Fifty tailgating me. Sort of defeats that purpose of having a mirror there. When I'm not backing up, I simply twist it up so that instead of seeing me being worried about a 5 ton vehicle looming less than a foot off my bumper when they look into my mirror, they just see their own blinding headlights.

    After I started doing that, I noticed that people stopped tailgating me. If I notice somebody has started tailgating me again, chances are I forgot to turn the mirror up again after backing out of somewhere.

    I have two side mirrors that work perfectly fine.

    ...Well, I guess some people do still tailgate me. But at least I don't have to look at their front grill and blinding headlights.