June 28th, 2013
This piece of genius does a good job of distilling a lot of the math behind traffic, which is something of a minor obsession of mine.
What’s new to me is the concept of anti-traffic spacing, which, now that you think about it for five minutes, makes sense.
But more intriguingly, it makes a sensational argument for driverless cars. Because computer-driven cars could be programmed to behave in an optimal, coordinated manner so as to mitigate traffic in a way human drivers simply can’t.
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Driverless cars are an anathema to the American Way of Life. If you like emasculation of society, I’m sure you would like to lose the freedom to control your vehicle in the manner that you desire.
“This is the problem. If you do anything at all, you stand the chance, no matter how many precautions you take, of never being able to do anything again. An accident is something which, by its very nature, cannot be prevented.
But no one has got that. Which means that everything now comes with a hand-rail and a luminous jacket and a hard hat and steel-toe-capped boots and a banksman and ear defenders and protective strips and beeps and bongs and warnings and notices and rules, and that means nothing is quite as much fun as it used to be when you could make a buggy from bits of an old pram and see how fast it would go down a steep hill.”
-Jeremy Clarkson.
bc July 8, 2013 at 12:20 pm
That really confirmed a lot of my own theories/ideas about how traffic works. When I was in grad school I was a driver’s ed instructor for a while in Atlanta…and interstate/highway driving was something I really focused on. The ideas on this website should be standard for education.
I really try to maintain a large following distance, particularly on the highway. But it becomes extremely difficult when there is a slowdown for whatever reason. I have personally enraged people behind me when doing this and it takes patience and perseverance to not give in and move ahead and just tailgate. You can just feel the pressure.
Anway