Traffic Jams on Open Highways

It's something I already knew, but hadn't really thought about. It was fascinating to see in the video just how quickly it happened though.

It's something seen in Seattle daily... someone at 5:30a taps their brakes for an off-ramp and by 6:30 there's a 5 mile slowdown that just doesn't get any better until 7 or 8 that nite.

they needed a research team to figure this out? if people pulled their heads out of their asses it would fix the problem

I agree with RDZombie, this was obviuos without having some team of wizbangs doing some calculations,then saying there is a problem... what a joke!

It may be obvious to some people, in fact it might be completely understood by many. However, the vast majority of the sheeple out on our highways have no critical thinking skills, let alone common sense. That's why this isn't obvious to every one. This is also psychology folks, not just traffic engineering.

it's very simple,
it is called the "worm" effect when one person fails to respond with the person in front of them, it slows everyone down, then the effect keeps going behind them, with people accelerating at different rates and with different reaction times

To each his own,
It's whatever man!

I live in New Orleans, LA and for the latter half of 2006 i was attending college in northern Louisiana at Louisiana Tech in Ruston and coming come essentially every other weekend. The drive on the highway, taking I-55 north to Jackson Mississippi and then I-20 west to Ruston usually took between 4 and 5 hours. Because i drive significantly faster than most people, i quickly began noticing how traffic outside of major cities behaves. While i never encountered a spontaneous traffic jam, i noticed that traffic moved essentially in waves. The people who drive the speed limit don't necessarily go exactly the same speed, so they end up clotting together, forming the "waves" i mentioned. Usually, the cars that are between waves are either still catching up, falling back or, like myself, pushing their way through each wave.
On a more current note, the expansion of the I-10 corridor through the Metairie suburb of New Orleans has illustrated the way that human behavior can worsen already bad snarls. Starting at around 1:30-2:00 PM on weekdays, traffic begins to backup in the westbound lanes of I-10 where it merges with I-610 and enters the construction area. I have experimented with my driving style while in this snarl and have found that by keep my distance from the person in front of me, there is less need to come to a complete stop. "stop and go" traffic is the worst because you aren't moving all the time. If people would just chill out and take their time and not dash out of the right lane onto a merge lane just to gain a few hundred feet, these snarls might not be as bad. Granted, driving intelligently can't compensate for a central snarl caused by construction, but i believe that it could certainly make the traffic jam move a bit more steadily.

I don't believe that these people are any less intelligent than you. These are the average drivers put in a circular track. When I think about it, there is human reaction rates, thinking time/processing time, and so on that makes a process, that is simple in theory or for a machine, hard for humans. You have to wait for the car in front of you to pull up and then hit the gas only to find he is beginning to slow down so you start to slow down, then he speeds up so you speed up only to find...you get the point. So maybe the problem isn't that we are stupid but really we are just humans with free thinking and processing capabilities. Perhaps, if we had the technology to let computers drive us around, we could travel much faster and safer (if the technology is just as reliable...which apparently isn't that reliable).

This may or may not be helpful but I have noticed a similar phenomena with my experience in the military especially on long distance marches where boredom or exhaustion cause minute spacing differences, the soldier then realizes his error and corrects. When the soldier behind him or others notice his correction they also correct themselves even if their spacing hasn't fluctuated minute over correction passing down a double file rank on the march the people at the rear of the rank must eventually run to catch up to the main body of troops even though the pace at the front of the ranks remains constant. This is a problem because it causes the troops at the rear to become exhausted more rapidly eventually slowing down the entire body as the slowest troops are cycled up to the front of the column. Because of this, spacing discipline is constantly enforced. We referred to it as the caterpillar effect but it is almost identical to this phenomena.

They only way to get rid of the human "error" is to take out the human. We shouldn't be driving as much as we do; we should be letting machines do the driving (as stated above by DaJBags). Where, rather than investing in public transportation, or nation (USA) continues to spend bottomless amounts on freeway expansion.

our*

And let me correct one sentence...

*Where, rather than spending a "bottomless" amount of money on freeways and such, our nation should be focusing it's money on public transportation.