Sometimes one driver can vastly improve traffic
Main site: http://trafficwaves.org/
On Seattle I-5, this left-hand exit lane is usually backed up during rush hour. The exit ramp leads into the high speed "Express Lanes" under the city. But if it's jammed, you'll lose more time than you gain. If you miss getting into that lane early, then you're screwed, since nobody in the mile-long row of cars will let you in. And while stuck in that lane, you have to sit in line for many minutes, driving like 2MPH.
But if I let ten cars merge ahead of me as I approach the jam, like magic the whole thing evaporates.
Unfortunately this video can't show you the view from above. You can't see behind me, so you can't see that my "hole" is the only one in a very long row of cars. Also you can't see the size of the reliable daily jam that was there on other days, or was there ahead of me before I arrived.
Note that letting a few cars ahead of you is NOTHING. On a 30min congested commute at 65MPH, 2sec between cars, if you instead drove 5MPH slower than the rest, how many other cars would pass you? Seventy five! In other words, you're only a "Slow Driver" when huge numbers of cars pass you. On the same commute, letting ten cars ahead of you will slow you down insignificantly: by less than 1MPH. Ten cars one way or another is too small to matter.
Conversely, if you want to drive faster than everyone else, then you need to pass fifty or one hundred other drivers. If you only managed to pass a few cars, that's called FAILURE, and your speed wasn't faster enough to matter.
Tags: traffic waves amasci science physics chaos diy cars driving hypermiling
