h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Traffic jams are very simple, though everyone trys to over complicate them.

A traffic jam occurs when different vehicles on the same road travel at different speeds. that's all



Speeding causes just as many traffic jams as driving too slow. It really does not matter what speed you travel at, so long as it is the same speed as everyone else. Once different vehicles travel at different speeds, you generate standing waves, and cause a traffic jam.

It is extremely rare that an accident causes a traffic jam, it is actually those that slow down to look, which is why the jam is generally worse in the direction opposite the accident.

To get to the root cause of virtually all jams, accidents and road slaughters/murders (what ever you want to call them), we need to look at the cause, i.e. the speed radar, and the breathalizer. Since we can measure how fast and how drunk you are, but we can't measure how stupid and incompetent you are, we assume that the accident was because you were drunk or speeding. If we had a way to actually measure if a person knew how to drive a car, we wouldn't have traffic jams, since we could control that the only people driving are those that know how to drive.

huh like that's going to happen.

This is definitely one of the causes of traffic jams; but there are other significant factors that contribute to, or cause, traffic jams.

Often they will start because of a particularly popular event, such as a major sporting event, or convention. They may result from lane closures for construction (not that any constructing can be detected).

Yet another type occurs because of constrained entrances and exits, to and from highways and freeways, where those trying to get off have stop lights with which they must contend. These last are often exacerbated by people who did not get over into the exit lane early enough.

So many causes, all with the same symptom .... ROAD RAGE!!!!!!