4 ms·
I don't think you've considered what you are saying. You're not describing a gapping strategy, you're just describing a slower driver (i.e. slower traffic). Th
by joshuak 7y ago
I don't think you've considered what you are saying. You're not describing a gapping strategy, you're just describing a slower driver (i.e. slower traffic). There is no question that a car consistently driving slower than ambient traffic speed is a net drag on overall throughput. In any single lain of traffic all cars are bound by the slowest car. If you drive 5 mph slower than the car in front of you then the car behind you must drive 5 mph slower still to continually produce gaps behind you. As the video illustrates introducing a slower driver is one of the things that creates phantom stop signs.
Of course you must maintain speed. The point of a gap is to allow for adjustments without the hard breaking that would create a phantom stop sign. That is the overall intent of the system. Move the most people as expediently as is safe from point a to point b. The best way to do this is to avoid speed differentials, being slower then ambient traffic speed creates a speed differential.
- Noumenon72 7y agoThat's not true about the second driver behind me, because people are not pulling into his gap, because his lane is going 5 mph slower than the other lanes. So he establishes it once and is fine. This is more of a thought experiment to show that you never have to keep slowing down to zero even if for some reason people continually enter your gap. I barely observe people entering my gap at all in practice, because all lanes are generally going the same speed so there's no benefit to it.