4 ms·
Wouldn't a surprise "lane reduction" due to an accident alone be enough to account for the traffic jam? Imagine that there's an accident in a single lane. The
by tpeo 10y ago
Wouldn't a surprise "lane reduction" due to an accident alone be enough to account for the traffic jam?
Imagine that there's an accident in a single lane. The remaining lanes now have to take in all the other drivers from the accident lane, while these drivers decelerate and attempt to take the remaining lanes at speeds lower than the average speed. Yet single car cutting in line could trigger the deceleration of the entire remaining lane (like in "traffic wave" models). The cars in this lane then try to cut into another lane, and so on, such that the whole traffic is impaired. And this keeps going on for every cohort of cars reaching the accident area, producing the traffic jam.
This is my intuition of it, at least.
- mjevans 10y agoYou've accurately observed what everyone in rush hour sees firsthand; how the poison distribution occurs in real life. Worse, if you're the one in that vanishing lane, behaving in those optimum for you ways, you're the winner. Automated driving, particularly if the automated driving lanes only obey 'safe driving speed' (not an actual limit) is the only real hope aside from a reduction in the traveling population. Speaking of that, the best solution to this issue and that of skyrocketing prices for housing of any sort is build-baby-build (in all the cities).
- eru 10y agoNitpick: it's spelled Poisson distribution. We are probably looking at a Poisson process, actually.
- Someone 10y agoYou're right, but this is something different. The OP talks about accidents on highways with a hard shoulder in the middle of the road, in a lane going in the reverse direction (I'm fairly sure that interpretation is correct, but it requires some reading between the lines)
- cm3 10y agoThat's right.