Rude Drivers Reduce Traffic Jams 882
BuzzSkyline writes "Traffic jams are minimized if a significant fraction of drivers break the rules by doing things like passing on the wrong side or changing lanes too close to an intersection. The insight comes from a cellular automata study published this month in the journal Physical Review E. In effect, people who disregard the rules help to break up the groups that form as rule-followers clump together. The risk of jamming is lower if all people obey the rules than if they all disobey them, according to the analysis, but jamming risk is lowest when about 40 percent of people drive like jerks."
and yet NYC still has traffic jams (Score:4, Interesting)
especially on the Belt Parkway where people seem to slow down to 30mph to go over a bridge
Not Rude in My Book! (Score:2, Interesting)
"Breaking the rules" is not rude behavior on the road, as far as I'm concerned. Most of the problems on our highways are caused by people driving 'below' the rules. Some examples are failing to accelerate to highway speed on the onramp, driving in the 'passing' lane when you aren't passing anyone, and my personal least favorite, not being ready to go when the light turns green at a crowded rush hour intersection. If no-one made these key mistakes our highways would probably be able to accomodate 20% more traffic without any physical upgrades in capacity. yet somehow, I'm the bad guy for flashing my lights at some jerk driving 55 right next to someone else going 55 when there are 15 cars stacked up behind him!
Compression Waves in Traffic (Score:1, Interesting)
The risk of jamming is lower if all people obey the rules than if they all disobey them
I beg to differ, compression waves in traffic form even when everyone obeys traffic http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2008/03/shockwave-traff.html
Once in traffic if you drive slowly avoiding the urge to speed up when a gap forms you can actually help everyone behind you have a more pleasant cruise.
Re:atlanta (Score:3, Interesting)
I think they did.
Re:and yet NYC still has traffic jams (Score:3, Interesting)
Ditto on the D.C. beltway. I don't understand people who slowdown for bridges or curves. It's not going to kill you to take the curve at 65mph. That's why the sign says 65 - because it was designed for high-speed travel. (duh)
By slowing-down you impede the flow of traffic and create a chain of cars behind you. Show some consideration. (sigh). This is why I leave home at 5 a.m. Most of the idiots don't come-out until after 6:30. Leaving early helps me to beat them.
Aside-
Another cure for traffic jams is to make our highways 20-lanes wide (like in Asimov's novels). I guarantee that a nice, wide, open stretch of macadam won't jam up if you have that many lanes to serve the cars.
Yet another cure is to simply let your office workers stay at home. Do I really need to drive two hours a day to sit inside a Baltimore office and type code all day? I can do the exact-same work at home.
Unrealistic model of academic interest. (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate people (Score:5, Interesting)
The other day, a person was changing their tire on the shoulder of the road facing the opposite direction (was a 4-lane road, 2 lanes in each direction, separated by a 20 foot or so median) and traffic on my side of the road came to a halt. Once I made it to the front of the line of traffic, in the lane (going the opposite direction) nearest the tire-changer, a car in the lane next to me and slightly ahead of me was gawking at the scene so hard they started drifting HARD into my lane. They were completely mesmerized by someone changing a frigging tire. To the point that they weren't even conscious that they were still driving a car.
I swear I don't get it. I had to blare my horn at them to get them to get back over into their lane, and they had the temerity to flip me off! Luckily for me, I drive a large truck and was able to pull in front of them at the next light where I stopped, put on my hazards, drug them from their car and threw them into traffic. No, of course I didn't. However, it's interesting how rage-filled we people get in traffic. I am trying to get it under control, but cannot abide selfish, stupid unaware drivers. I hate them with a burning passion.
Re:Respect rules of the road, not just the officia (Score:5, Interesting)
I know I slow down when people tailgate me very badly (within a meter), and speed up again when they change lanes. It's a guilty pleasure.
Honestly, it's the only safe thing to me do. If I have someone driving that close behind me I'll need more time to brake if something happens up ahead, to prevent the person behind me ramming into me.
Give me space, and we'll go a nice fast speed. I'll be happy to let you pass me and will move to the right. Ride my ass and expect to go under the limit.
Re:atlanta (Score:2, Interesting)
You've pegged Atlanta. Here, people tend to be somewhat nice drivers. (As opposed to, for example, New York City, where they are horrible mean.) But very, very fast on the highways.
And, for some totally inexplicably reason, the Downtown Connector has a frickin speed limit of 55, so people are constantly going about 20 over, or about 10 over what it should be. (The greatest stunt ever [youtube.com].)
For those of you who don't know what the Connector is, that's where I-75 and I-85, the main north-south roads, merge into one giant superroad. 16 lanes of traffic in some places, 300,000+ cars a day.
All going 80 miles an hour. Down a road that doesn't have a medium, or a shoulder half the time. (The road essentially goes underneath the city streets, straight through both Downtown and Midtown, with walls down the side and buildings on top of them looming over the road.)
OTOH, people will, in fact, let you into traffic on the surface streets, and not attempt to wedge their car up your ass or cut you off.
Re:and yet NYC still has traffic jams (Score:5, Interesting)
Last week I was in France, in a car, on the motorway. I couldn't understand why the traffic was so jammed up, but I sat in traffic on the 3+3 lane road for almost an hour. There was no traffic on the other side.
Then, as I came up to a bridge I noticed there were people lined up underneath it -- the Tour de France was passing underneath the motorway. Some people were driving past at less than walking pace hoping that the cyclists would pass by at just that time, but they didn't. Once over the bridge, there was no traffic jam at all -- except on the other side of the road, where the jam went on for miles.
Re:Doing their part to reduce traffic! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:40%? (Score:2, Interesting)
And if the speed limit is 65, and I'm in the left lane going 75, and you come up on my ass flashing lights trying to get me to move over, you will get ignored. I don't give a shit if you want to go 85 in a 65 like 30% of the other drivers, the limit is 65 and I'm already going 75. I'm not going to move into the right lane and get stuck behind someone going 55, unable to change lanes because everyone on my left is going 25-30mph faster than me.
Re:and yet NYC still has traffic jams (Score:5, Interesting)
Other things that completely screw up traffic (besides the obvious grid-lockers and rubberneckers, even when someone is just changing a tire or getting a ticket):
1. "hypermilers" who don't understand lights are timed for the speed limit, and if you don't get up to speed in a reasonable amount of time, you're just going to waste all that gas at red lights.
2. During rush hour, the problem on "surface" streets is that lights can't be long enough to allow everyone to go through during the green light, so those people just sitting there when the light turns green are racking up the number of cars that are going to get stuck for an extra cycle... but the problem, as I see it, is people have largely stopped honking, so they'll just sit behind such an oblivious person and just wait. If people honked, we could get things moving again. It doesn't have to be a nasty lean on the horn, just a toot-toot.
3. Cops... I like cops, I appreciate cops, I have cops in the family; it's not really the cops, it's the people who drop below the speed limit simply because one is nearby.
A few other things that affect me daily: we have a number of locations where the right turn goes into a protected lane... so there are "keep moving" signs... nothing so infuriating as the people in front of you coming to a COMPLETE stop at a "keep moving" sign. In the same vein, there are a number of places with RIGHT turn arrows that are green when the cross traffic has the left turn... again, people come to a complete stop, and sometimes don't even continue moving at all, treating it as a right turn on red.
And lately, the past year or so, I wouldn't necessarily call them "hypermilers" but so many people seem unwilling to even get up to the speed limit, let alone exceed it by a few miles per hour, as if you're going to get a ticket for 48 in a 45... I know the police aren't going to give me a ticket for 5 miles over, and I often get passed by cops when doing so.
Whew. Nice to rant about it every once in awhile... "cathartic" experience.
Re:Respect rules of the road, not just the officia (Score:4, Interesting)
the safe thing to do is you should have already switched lanes (if you're in the left that is) by the time they got to you if you see them coming up.
This isn't always possible. Often, there are people in the right hand lane going 70-75 mph and passing the speed limiters in the left lane who are traveling 65 mph. Just because you want to go 85 mph doesn't mean the slower motorists should automatically bow to your speedy abilities. This would, in my opinion, mean that *you* are driving like an asshole.
This is *most* evident when two tractor trailers are passing each other on a major two or three lane highway. But basic congestion causes it too... and whenever you drive like an asshole when there is already congestion... you are only going to make it worse.
Corollary: I've always thought cops should actively seek to give tickets to motorists who get passed on the left by drivers who are traveling at a legal speed limit. That behavior is just a dangerous as the asshole who weaves in and out of traffic. So, slow drivers in right-hand and middle lanes are assholes, too.
Re:and yet NYC still has traffic jams (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, none of these people are allowed to drive any car with an automatic transmission, ever again. They can drive when they can think.
Hah! I have also wondered if that alone would change much of this.
When I was a teenager and had a learner's permit I had a choice of whether I would start out with a manual or an automatic transmission as my parents had each. I chose the manual. I have never regretted that. The extra involvement with what the vehicle is doing helped to give me a better awareness of what's going on around me, because to operate a manual transmission smoothly you can't just react, you have to anticipate what the traffic around and in front of you is doing. That is, it's best to see ahead of time that traffic is slowing down or speeding up so you can already be in the right gear when it does. Learning to use a manual skillfully also implied extra time practicing, giving more opportunities for my parents to notice and correct what would otherwise have become bad habits. Not to mention that if you are familiar with a manual then you can drive nearly any vehicle (at least, any vehicle a normal license would allow you to drive).
I wish I could prove it but I am convinced that if automatics were outlawed there would be a strong reduction in the number of accidents.
Re:and yet NYC still has traffic jams (Score:4, Interesting)
Like the guy a few posts up said, the people who irritate me the most are the people who sit in the fast and go the same speed as everyone in the other lanes. We've got a 4/5-lane highway with a speed limit of 65 running through town.
Going home from work I'll see quite a bit of traffic in the right two lanes, a little less in the third lane, and hardly any in the left lane. Except the one jackass who's going the same speed as everyone in the other lanes and just wants his (her?) own lane. I have no problem running up on those people and sitting on their bumper until they get a clue.
If you're going the same speed as people in the lane next to you, get in the lane next to you.
The cop-drivers like you said are always good for a laugh. On the same 65mph highway I'll come up on a clump of cars and, sure enough, there's a cop leading the pack. These people might be going 5 or 10 mph below the speed limit, but no one wants to pass the cop. Assuming there's a lane open I always enjoy passing the clot at 10mph over everyone else and leaving them wondering why the cop isn't pulling me over.
I saw this once in my rearview, a cop pulled on the onramp and everyone behind him slowed to match his speed (which was lower than the limit). I was the last car in front of him and for the next several miles until we were out of view I just watched the headlights in the mirror get farther and farther back, not a single person passed him. There was a miles-wide gap between myself and the cars in front of me, and the cop.
Yeah, we should have a daily traffic thread to get this out.
Re:and yet NYC still has traffic jams (Score:3, Interesting)
Tell that to my officemate, who got a ticket for doing 48 in a 45 zone. It's utter BS, but they do give tickets.
Re:Doing their part to reduce traffic! (Score:4, Interesting)
I've always wanted a law that billed people who cause accidents on major freeways (or their estates, as the case may be) the average hourly wage for that state multiplied by the number of total hours lost due to their actions. For example, if some asshole gets into a fender bender on 95 because he was fucking with his goddammed cell phone and 10,000 people are delayed for an hour and the average wage in Maryland is $17/hour then he (or his estate) owes $170,000 which can then be used to fund hypertension treatment facilities and meditation centers in the state.
Re:Doing their part to reduce traffic! (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the jury is still out on whether its safe or not - and most evidence so far suggests its actually safer. I know if traffic is crawling along it seems safe enough to me - the biggest problem is being cut off by arse holes who are pissed off you're filtering through traffic despite the fact they are sitting there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lane_splitting#Relevant_research [wikipedia.org]
I know in the UK you can only do it when traffic is flowing below a certain speed, and that they ask you questions about it if you are getting a regular drivers license (yes - hard to believe they'd want drivers of cars to be aware of motorcycles) - of course license requirements there are much much more stringent than they are in the USA.
Thing is - on a hot day sitting on a hot bike in full gear (its like wearing your fur coat to the beach...) not moving can be really miserable. It can contribute to fatigue, bike failure - all kinds of stuff that I would figure would be more dangerous to traffic than filtering.
Re:Correlation != causation (Score:3, Interesting)
The cry "Correlation != causation" is now the official Slashdot signal for someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, and probably didn't read the article.
(1) This research is done on a computer model of each possible behavior. It's a designed experiment. Neil A. Weiss, Introductory Statistics p. 22: "In a designed experiment, researchers impose treatments and controls and then observe charactersitics and take measurements. Observational studies can reveal only association, whereas designed experiments can help establish causation." (Emphasis his.)
(2) The issue of slack between cars is not overlooked, it's *included as a major component of the reasearch*. FTA: "However, there is one rule you shouldn't break, according to a new analysis of how high-volume traffic flows along a highway. Cecile Appert-Rolland, a physicist at the University of Paris-Sud, looked at the tailing distances between cars traveling on a busy two-lane expressway in the suburbs of Paris. Most people have heard of the 'three-second rule' for following distances; after the car ahead of you passes a point on the road, count to three. If you pass the same object before you get to three, you're following too closely...
Re:and yet NYC still has traffic jams (Score:2, Interesting)
Red light: foot OFF the gas (Score:4, Interesting)
1. "hypermilers" who don't understand lights are timed for the speed limit, and if you don't get up to speed in a reasonable amount of time, you're just going to waste all that gas at red lights.
2. During rush hour, the problem on "surface" streets is that lights can't be long enough to allow everyone to go through during the green light, so those people just sitting there when the light turns green are racking up the number of cars that are going to get stuck for an extra cycle... but the problem, as I see it, is people have largely stopped honking, so they'll just sit behind such an oblivious person and just wait. If people honked, we could get things moving again. It doesn't have to be a nasty lean on the horn, just a toot-toot.
And lately, the past year or so, I wouldn't necessarily call them "hypermilers" but so many people seem unwilling to even get up to the speed limit, let alone exceed it by a few miles per hour, as if you're going to get a ticket for 48 in a 45... I know the police aren't going to give me a ticket for 5 miles over, and I often get passed by cops when doing so.
He's a thing I do: When the light in front of me turns red, I get my foot off the gas, and I let the car decelerate towards the red light.
When I'm in the zone, I pretty much don't stop at red lights because they have the time to turn back to green before I get to them.
Now, here's the problem with that: The masses of idiots who are in a fucking hurry to go park on the red. They cut me off, and then I have to stop behind them while I wait for them to start up again when the light turns green. Some of them are salvageable, as after seeing me do my thing for a few lights they understand the principle and start laying off the gas when they see the next red, some are not, and insist on cutting me off and, I dunno... win the street race going on in their demented little heads. First one wasting gas and brake lining wins! Woo!
Anyway, leadfoot, remember that red lights mean "stop accelerating", not "this is the finish line to the race, quick, get here before anybody else" :)
Re:and yet NYC still has traffic jams (Score:3, Interesting)
No, they're not. Notice how no one is really happy with the performance of government? It's because the voters don't really have a choice. The only choices you have are ones which are approved by the establishment (the media, the other politicians in power, etc.). It's not like Joe Centrist can run for office and get elected and change all these things; it's unlikely he'll get elected because of all the politics and media, and even if he does get elected, then he can't get anything done which the voters really want because the other people in power won't allow it (you can't get new laws passed without a majority of politicians agreeing). Plus, we have the whole corrupt two-party thing going on, preventing anyone who doesn't conform to one of the two parties from getting elected. Basically, the whole system is rigged.
Most people want a higher speed limit. This is easily proven by looking at how fast traffic flows on most highways; people driving at or below the speed limit are usually a minority. But it's not going to happen because local governments make a lot of money on speeding tickets (and now, automated speeding cameras).
Re:Riiiight. (Score:3, Interesting)
I take issue whatever study showed that waiting until the last minute is more efficient. You've got 1 lane of traffic, and for any given speed that lane travels at, you can only get a certain flow rate of cars through that bottleneck, no matter if it's 1 lane feeding it, 2 lanes, or 100 lanes. Well, if you wait until the last minute to merge, you end up with cars tighter together, which means the tolerance for merging is a lot smaller. This would be perfectly fine if everything were computer controlled, but since we've got human with emotions involved, you end up with people having to slow down to merge more carefully. But see, by slowing down, you've just decreased the speed of the lane, so fewer cars are going to make it through in a given time. On the other hand, if you merge early, vehicles will not yet have moved into a tighter formation, so you can more comfortably merge into a single lane without having to slow down as much. You can maintain a higher overall speed, and thus get a higher flow rate through the bottleneck. However, even if you can merge together at the last minute without slowing down, at best you get the same flow rate as if everyone had merged early, so in what way is merging late better?
Of course, we are talking theoretically here. As soon as the one idiot gets greedy and waits until the end, you lose that benefit as everyone has to slow down anyway. However, that's where proper enforcement can come into play. Start ticketing people and they'll learn. Then again, you start ticketing people and that just compounds the problem as people start slowing down..."oh my god, it's a police officer....and he's writing a ticket....slow...down...I've...never...seen...that...before". I guess the only way to make it work right is to go vigilante and start blocking the lane, but then that opens up a whole different can of worms. I guess you can't win.
Also, on this topic, I find it interesting to see how people in different areas behave. Here in Michigan, you will almost always see people waiting until the last minute to merge. A few years ago we went down the the Smokies/Blue Ridge Parkway. On the way back, we were in Virginia (or maybe West Virginia). There was construction at a tunnel, and we were merged into one lane. There was nobody waiting until the last minute to merge. I looked back in the mirror, and for as far as I could see (at least a half mile), there was just a single line of cars and an empty lane.
Re:and yet NYC still has traffic jams (Score:1, Interesting)
I had a couple of years of driving in Europe, based in Germany but near Belgium and the Netherlands, and I managed to drive to Scandinavia, France, Italy, Switzerland and so on on holidays. On the German autobahns there was mostly no speed limit, just in places where they were marked. However the Germans do enforce moving back to the right lane whenever possible. Traffic flowed better in Germany than in the places with speed limits. The two main factors in this seemed to be that you did not get idiots in the fast lane who thought it was their God given right to enforce the speed limits, and that the drivers maintain a high degree of awareness about what is happening around them. Partly the need to change lanes and partly the high standard of driver training I think. So up to the limit of capacity, the Germans get more traffic through a given size of autobahn than anywhere else I have been, which does include Dallas and LA but no other parts of the states. Meanwhile places with speed limits end up with drongos with God complexes trying to enforce the limits. And how do you know that your speedo is so accurate anyway?
One thing I was taught was that if the guy behind you seems to be in a hurry, let him go past so he can have his accident somewhere else, preferably where you are not. Also if he is going 10 over the limit, you are less likely to get a ticket for going 5 over.
Of course Germany is also renowned for the size of its traffic jams....when things do go wrong you can get a very long queue very quickly. So you tend to travel on the autobahn either very fast or at a walking pace! We found that few Germans seem to use the well marked alternative routes, so by dropping down onto the B roads you can make quite reasonable progress even when the autobahn is blocked up.