From a previous blog post I made, I was introduced to an article written by William Beaty called "Traffic experiments and a cure for waves and jams."
http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/amateur/traffic/trafexp.html
I read that before, and that is the best thing to do when there's traffic, and I actually do his "wave busting" at those times. The wave busting thing happened unintentionally though, since I drive stick shift, it's easier for me to keep a distance away from the car in front of me in traffic, since it requires less necessity to change gears. Staying at an average speed with traffic, driving on one lane, leaving a gap of space in front of me, allowing people to merge, etc... just like William Beaty described in that article. Things go by smoothly if you follow those rules, and works perfectly when there's traffic. However in my previous blog post, I was talking more so about when there isn't any traffic at all. A lot of people talk about driving in traffic a lot of the time, so I think it's time I speak my mind about driving when there isn't traffic.
People's driving behaviors are different when there isn't traffic, compared to when they are in the middle of moderate/heavy traffic. That article is all about driving in rush hour traffic or in moderate to heavy traffic. I drive in neither of those conditions the majority of the time, since I work the graveyard shift, so that article while related doesn't necessarily exactly reflect my complaint. When that one lone slow car on the left is going something like 60MPH, while everybody else to his right is going something like 70MPH. That's a situation that simply should not happen, and is not completely something that is covered in that article.
An additional question that I should have added to my previous blog post (which I'll put on the edit).
- Being on the fast lane, are the cars to the right of your lane moving significantly faster than you?
That's my issue. That one lone car who is driving slow on the fast lane while everybody around is at a faster speed is unintentionally forcing more merging situations behind him, which in turn is causing traffic. BTW, that article doesn't really talk about the dynamics of a multi-lane freeway and how each lane tends to go at different speeds in a non moderate/heavy traffic condition, which is where I'm coming from. He isn't even talking about those elements, especially considering that they do affect and start traffic in the first place, and he only really hints at that with his passages about merge lanes and exit lanes.
You should stay at the flow of traffic to prevent a traffic jam like he suggests, but what IS staying with the flow of traffic? I find that the flow of traffic isn't a singular number than everybody should follow. If that was the case, then the video I posted will happen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B-Ox0ZmVIU) creating an unecessary wall of traffic and would just provoke the reckless drivers to zig zag within that wall of traffic and causing more traffic. I still suggest the slow on right, fast on left rule, but I'd like to add a couple more rules to that like William Beaty himself have suggested. You have to also be a "non-competitive" driver, leave a good "gap of empty space" in front of you (or as he called it, the 2 seconds rule), and try to stick with a single lane. People who tend to change lanes constantly, do end up creating more traffic jams, as that kind of driver is forcing their faster speed on the slower lanes to the right, which is clearly not going with the flow of traffic. Ofcourse zig zagging shouldn't be necessary if people followed my rules.
Fast on the left. Slow on the right. Let's go back to that again first. With that rule, a standard four lane freeway would have an increasing number growing from the farthest lane on the right, to the farthest lane on the left. Something like 60MPH, 65MPH, 70MPH, 75MPH, which is closer to what I see actually happening in real life. If you were to merge to the lane next to you, you just need to find that gap of space, go in and adjust yourself to the speed of that lane. It's much easier to merge lanes, when that lane is going at a different speed than the lane you are in. If the lane next to you was going the same speed you are going, then you are forced to either increase or decrease your speed on the lane you are on, which to the definition as stated in William Beaty's article will only cause more traffic. In addition, there's even more of an effort to merge lanes if people did not follow the other rules. Non-competitive driving and leaving a gap of space in front of you.
Being a non-competitive driver and letting people into your lane is all about team work, and it's really all about "taking turns," or the "zipper effect" as William Beaty puts it. First, use the other rule by leaving a gap of space in front of you to allow people to merge in. Preferrably, this gap also exists behind you. If the car that wants to merge in is in the 10 or 11 o'clock position or the 1 or 2 o'clock position to you, then let him go in front of you. If that merging car is in your 8 or 7 o'clock position or the 4 or 5 o'clock position to you, then he should go behind you. If the car behind you clearly doesn't want that car to go in, you may have to slow the flow of your lane's traffic a little in order for that merging car to go in front of you. That'll help minimize causing additional unecessary traffic in both lanes. What you don't want to do is increase your speed to see if that merging car will be able to go behind you, because it still relies on the car behind you to open that gap; which probably won't happen.
Staying on one preferred lane is very important to keep the flow of traffic moving properly. I prefer staying on the fastest lane on the left, because there's no real point to stay on the slow right when you aren't planning to exit yet anyway (merge a couple of miles in advance if you plan to exit). The less cars merging, the less chances there are of unintentional situations of causing traffic as I described in my previous paragraph. Ofcourse I'd like to stay content with being on the left lane, as long as it keeps acting like the fast lane as intended, being that it needs to move faster than the lanes on the right.
The lanes' speeds from farthest right to fartest left shouldn't be something like 65MPH, 70MPH, 75MPH, 65MPH. That one variation can cause problems. If that happened, then the cars behind the slow poke in the "fast" lane will force themselves to merge to the right to go faster (this happens far less when in heavy traffic though). The increasing merging situations in those two lanes will in turn cause more cars on that lane next to the fast lane to slow down to accomodate it, creating a wall of cars trapping the people in both the left and right of it from merging, causing more traffic. Not to mention some of the people who will cut off the slow guy on the fast lane (once again, that doesn't happen often in heavy traffic conditions), which in turn will make that driver go even slower, causing more traffic on both lanes, which will cascade into the other lanes as well. It will end up looking something like (from right to left lanes) 60MPH, 61MPH, 65MPH, 62MPH. Oh look, things slowed down, and it's all because it started with someone driving slow on the fast lane. That keeps up, and it'll be another huge traffic wave or traffic jam as that article is reacting to in the first place. All that slow driver in the fast lane needed to do, was move faster than the lane on the right, which will stop the merging problem, and resume the flow of trafic back to normal.
Looking back at that article by William Beaty, that "one lone car can improve traffic conditions" idea can make a difference, however his theories are generally a reaction to driving in traffic that already exists. I'd like to go one step ahead of that, by preventing traffic from happening when there isn't any traffic in the first place. I have done my fair share of observing how people drive in freeways, so I'm basing my opinions on my own experiences.
p.s. Kinda related, but not really... It's a fact that driving much faster than the speed limit on the freeway only really saves you around a minute or less to get to the off ramp. But that's the biggest distinction right there, "the OFF RAMP." That one extra minute might make the difference in getting the green light on local streets, which will save you even more time and minutes in getting to your destination. You may not get those extra time and minutes on local streets if you hit the red light, since you were a minute too late in getting on the off ramp, because you weren't going "fast enough" in getting there. It is all circumstancial, and I could get into more detail there, but not right now.
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