Traffic Waves

FINALLY, someone who understands the karma of good driving!!!

I also find that momentary eye contact with other clued-in drivers makes for less traffic jams.

Sadly, city traffic lights here (Lincoln, Nebraska) are reverse-programmed (red on flow, green on dead), I call them Gas Wasting Lights.

Thanks for uploading this, I consider it educational!!!

i see same here (Moscow) every time.
few selfish idiots create traffic jam from nowhere.
it so stupid, but probably only way to avoid it is mandatory centralized remote control - probably in the future i hope.
until then i will continue use subway ;-)

Every time you hit the brakes, you convert fuel into heat... throwing away kinetic energy and wasting fuel. Acceleration from a stop (or passing) requires the most amount of energy. Avoiding both makes a lot of sense and saves fuel and wear and tear. Hybrids try to recapture some of this loss using regenerative braking, turning off when not needed, and assisting in the acceleration, allowing for weaker (more fuel efficient) engines.

This is cool. You are in essence a buffer.

It reminds me of how I played graphically demanding flight sims with my older PC; I got good at anticipating CPU / GPU bottlenecks and avoiding them altogether with a little tact. Eventually, it was all subconscious. I'd delay certain actions just long enough to ensure I had the headroom to load the texture or effect and keep going without a stutter.

Overall it required minimal effort, but kept the framerate up thus making it more enjoyable!

Yep... I've noticed this for years. Cool.

The logic behind this is sound. However, I live in NY and I wonder if there are people that are pre-programmed to cheat. As in, even if there is a large gap between cars, they won't merge because they prefer to wait until the last possible point. If this is the case, this strategy would have no effect on traffic.

Also, I fear consistent horn hoking if I'm routinely waiting a few seconds to let a gap build in front of me.

> people that are pre-programmed to cheat

They certainly exist, since I was one myself. On open highways we also have to drive 20% faster than everyone else. We'd rather die than act like average normal sheep.

Or say it this way: on highways if you don't block speeders, but just sadly shake your head at them ...then during congestion you should open up space and let plenty of cheaters merge. You can shake your head sadly, but if you try to block them, it triggers enormous traffic jams.

this is awesome. i came to the exact same conclusions, except i didn't think of it in terms of one person having a large effect; my view was that you would have the change the behaviour of 2/3 of drivers to have any effect. But, ya, done right, a 100km/h highway that runs at 5km/h in a traffic jam and probably reach 60km/h of steady traffic.

> have to change the behavior of 2/3

In plugged merge zones, you just have to re-start the "zipper flow." Sometimes one car can do this. Other times it requires too much empty space. But in any case, it's not a matter of population percentage.

With stop&go driving, one person can smooth out one lane, but the waves eventually reappear. In that case you'd need "buffer" drivers for each lane, and they'd need to pass by ever ?5? min. For cars spaced 1.5sec apart, that's 0.5% of drivers.

> what type of video camera

Old crappy Sony Cybershot w/mpeg mode and a 2GB flash card.