wbeaty
5 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2013–2022
7:02 · 1M views · Jul 27, 2008
A short video from the trafficwaves.org site showing how traffic jams and standing waves form, including the fight between cheaters and blockers at an exit-lane backup. It also touches on how individual driving behavior affects the flow.
HN likes it as a fun, clear explainer of traffic waves and of the benefits of leaving gaps while driving.
6 comments from Hacker News
One of my favorite videos of all time on this topic: Traffic Waves this video (Not new information, but a fun video, and it's something truckers have known about for decades)
You beautiful zen traffic wave surfer you. This, a thousand times this. Somewhere on the web there is a great video of a guy doing this pretty effectively. I guess it's maybe five years old now but worth a watch. I think this wsj vid may contain excerpts from the original: [LINK] If everyone could just relax out there, some of those traffic standing waves would diffuse away to nothing. Ahhh... When I get in bad traffic and struggle against the urge to tailgate I play a game where I try and give enough space to where I just roll up to the car in front of me as it is starting to move again. This gives me a time-local goal to aim at instead of fixating on supposed "bad actors" I might want to judge instead. Edit: I found it! (from 2008 it appears) this video
I leave massive gaps constantly now, it lets me see farther ahead so I can switch lanes when I see a problem coming and my average trip time is definitely shorter because of this. I really like this video for describing some of the advantages of "zen driving": this video
William J Beaty's video on Traffic Waves (linked in the article) is an enjoyable summary of some of these ideas: this video
I don't know if you've seen this video[0]. It helped me understand traffic waves quite a bit [0] this video