Image by: Wyscan
This morning I had a Silverado 1500 that either knew how to work a traffic jam, or had been caught behind me before and knew the drill.
He kept back about 4 to 10 car lengths depending on what the flow in front of me was doing, and I kept 2 to 10 car lengths between the cars in front of me. The two of us and everyone behind us were travelling 20-45 mph through the jam and people were able to merge in and out of our lane with ease. The folks in the left two lanes were travelling if you can call it that 1 to 5 mph stop and go.
The enemy of a traffic jam is open space, getting on the bumper of the car in front of you will make it impossible for people to merge in and out of your lane smoothly and will make the jam stronger each time someone has to force their way in and will slow everyone behind the merge down, if you are in a jam moving at less than 1 mile per hour this could halve the speed. On the other hand if people are letting every other car into the flow smoothly the average speed will raise once the blockage is cleared, and during the blocked period speed will remain smooth as long as people drive courteously.
The empty space I leave will spread throughout the jam and eventually break it up just a bit. The reason this works is because people are allowed to move freely and not feel the need to make crazy maneuvers that interrupt the flow of traffic in adjacent lanes causing slowing.
Kacey Green
KaceyGreen.com
"This post brought to you by Tangent's randomly firing synapses."
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