An experiment conducted in Japan in 2008 showed that traffic jams can start for no real reason



    by According_Spell_5269

    27 Comments

    1. No real reason? Following too close so that a small change in speed makes the following car have to brake harder which then propagates like a wave causing traffic.

    2. LivingTheTruths on

      Go to any major city today. Traffic is caused by people literally on their phones while driving

    3. JustAboutAlright on

      One of two reasons – a moron or a group of morons. The people who think it happens for no reasons are likely in one of those two groups.

    4. hatredforcabbage on

      Hey guys, I am a traffic planner. As some others have already said, the reason for a traffic jam usually are drivers’ reactions to others. So braking when another one in front of you does or when you notice too late that the car in front of you is slower for example. And whenever you have others behind you that are forced to react to your action, a chain reaction happens and boom, traffic jam. So the ultimate reason is a combination of nobody driving perfectly and too much traffic overall. In this circle you see here, there is quite a big number of cars going round. Simply too many for that one lane circle road they are forming.

      So yeah, there are real reasons of course. And I am also quite sure that traffic planners and others who work with traffic knew that before some japanese guys played mythbusters nippon in 2008 😀

      Edit: typo 🙂

    5. cellphone_blanket on

      It’s a death spiral. Each car is following the pheromone trail of the car ahead of it in a loop. So sad to see 🙁

    6. The “no real reason” in that case is the lack of distance to the car in front of you. You need to break and if the person behind you does the same…well.

    7. If everyone drove like me this wouldn’t happen

      – Everyone in the comments, me included

    8. There’s is a reason tho. It’s those reckless idiots that go faster, and geriatric morons that go slower than you at the moment.

    9. The reason here is bad drivers not keeping their distance from other cars or maintaining a steady speed

    10. Flaky-Rip-1333 on

      They start because a single asshole slows down slower than average while a single other asshole doesnt keep a normal distance.

    11. A-nom-nom-nom-aly on

      I used to work for a traffic management company that monitored the main motorways and A roads in the whole of the UK… and there’s always a reason

      The most common one was something that caused traffic to slow down, avoid or reduce the number of lanes. So a minor collision on a motorway, and cars/debris reduce the lanes from 3 to 2.

      The original incident might only last for a few minutes… but depending on how busy the road was and the time of day it happens… the effects can last for hours and creates a ripple effect.

      An incident that happened between junctions 5 and 6 and was cleared within 30 mins, between the hours of 7-10am or 4-7pm can cause traffic delays for up to 2 or more hours afterwards, and the traffic slowing down, ripples further and further away. So the delay between 5 & 6, soon becomes a delay between 6 & 7.

      If you’ve ever been on a journey and traffic has slowed down and back up… and then suddenly cleared without you ever having seen what’s caused it… It’s likely the ripple effect from a much earlier incident is the cause.

    12. That’s why I prefer to slow roll instead of stop and go. The constant predictable movement keeps the cars behind me moving predictably and slowly as well.

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