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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.
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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.
(Score: 2) by ancientt on Monday December 18 2017, @12:29AM (1 child)
Okay, but what about mandatory mergers?
I mean, my driving strategy is to Drive Zen™. I try to let people merge in front of me when I can. I signal when I'm changing lanes. I focus on remembering that we're all in this together. When there's a backup, I try to drive at a pace that will let me slow down without needing brakes. It happens a fair amount, but I try to let the jerks do what they do and be a driver that helps everyone get where they need to to be.
All that said, sometimes I'm that asshole. Three or four days a week, I drive a route that has two lanes merge into one. Many, maybe most days, the traffic backs up in a way that clogs up and slows everybody down. Some jerks try to bypass the wait of merging. They drive in the lane that's ending, as far as they can. They're basically trying to cut in line. Most days, I move into the lane that continues and I wait. I get in line and I wait. I wait for traffic to move along, as it does... eventually. Occasionally, however, I'll stay in the lane that is ending, being forced to merge, but drive at the same speed as the cars in the lane that continues. This means the people who would otherwise be cutting in line are forced to drive at the same speed as the rest of the cars waiting in line. Results seem to indicate that everyone moves at the pace which moves traffic as efficiently as possible. I'm torn though. I know from what I've read that giving a buffer in front helps everyone in the whole.
Now we come to the reason I'm asking you what you think. You've given an opinion I can respect, one I can identify with. That's why I want to know what you think. What I don't know is whether refusing to jump the line improves traffic flow overall or whether it hurts. My sense of fairness gets a boost when I help everyone trying to be fair get their rightful place, but does it really help traffic flow overall?
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(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday December 18 2017, @03:17AM
Drive Zen. I like it. I tend to think of it more in terms of Tao - on the road or otherwise I try to contribute to "psoitive flow. Or a phrase from some novel that I really liked: an easing of the way.
I don't know that I'm qualified to have an opinion on efficient merging - seems like the sort of thing that you'd need to to rigorous experiments on to be able to talk about anything but your own preconceptions.
That said - you sound like my kind of asshole. When efficiency is dubious (even when it isn't, really), fairness seems like a good goal to pursue. One of my own favorite examples of benevolent assholery is one of those truck snarls. Waited patiently in line until it was my turn to start passing the truck on the right - and then just didn't. Hung out at his rear bumper as traffic piled up behind me feeling all those glares trying to burn a hole in the back of my head until everyone in front of me cleared the truck, and then fell back just enough so he could get over and flashed my lights to let him know it was clear.
Swear I had more than a few singed hairs from all the glares, but my reward was watching what had been a rapidly growing traffic snarl dissolve back to smooth flow before the truck vanished in my rear-view mirror.