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Ants Are Practically Immune to Traffic Jams

191 points by laktak 7y ago

vezycash 7y ago
Ants can create new paths on demand. Ants on a trail typically have the same destination. Ants aren't going to park on the already tiny trail unlike humans. Bumps, potholes slow down cars and limit ability to increase speed unlike ants. We'll be finally able to traffic jam free when flying cars become the norm.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- handWavey 7y ago
  Flying cars won't become the norm, because too many people lack the cognitive traits and skills required to fly a vehicle. I'm being charitable with my words. From cradle to grave, the overwhelming majority of people you interact with every day are too unreliable to entrust with flying vehicles. From childhood, to adulthood, to old age, most people would not, should not, could not perform well as pilots of flying vehicles. They don't have it in them. So, this being HN, let's break out the tool box filled with buzzwords. Flying cars, after all, are just another nail, and we have plenty of software hammers to hit it with. Hey! I know, what about machine learning? AI! Self driving cars that can fly! One thing missing from that equation is faith in the software development life cycle, and a belief that we can engineer life saving systems, like drawing water from a faucet. Eh, not so much. Why, if I were king, it would've already happened! ...probably not so much.
- donmatito 7y ago
  That's not what the article is saying. They have tested ant flow on narrow bridges where additional lanes aren't possible. From the article: "they do this through self-imposed speed regulation. When it's moderately busy, for instance, the authors found the ants actually speed up, accelerating until a maximum flow or capacity is reached. Whereas, when a trail is overcrowded, the ants restrained themselves and avoided joining until things thinned out. Plus, at high density times like this, the ants were found to change their behaviour and slow down to avoid more time-wasting collisions." We'll be finally able to traffic jam free when autopilot will make us slow appropriately in high density conditions, avoiding accordion-like brake/accelerate/brake cycles
  - pif 7y ago
    > We'll be finally able to traffic jam free when autopilot will make us slow appropriately in high density conditions... It looks wonderful! Just, please, add the option into your autopilot to let me pass before playing with the best jam-reabsorbing strategy! I need to go places, not like the rest of you who hit the road just for fun!
  - CodesInChaos 7y ago
    Congestion dependent speed limits have been in use for a long time on German highways.
    - Spare_account 7y ago
      The principle is sound, but the ants actually obey the rules whereas (in the UK at least) a small contingent of human drivers will ignore the limits, speeding up and slowing down between enforcement cameras. This concertina effect from just a small number of drivers is enough to slow the entire flow of traffic.
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        It would have happened anyway after a certain density of vehicles is exceeded, since each car and truck had different accel/decel rates. Especially if there is an incline anywhere.
    - donmatito 7y ago
      yes, speed reduction on the Paris belt was also done in order to reduce traffic jams. The argument was "peak speed is slower, but apart from night/holidays situation with empty road, you'll actually get faster to where you're going because of less jams"
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    > We'll be finally able to traffic jam free when autopilot will make us slow appropriately in high density conditions, avoiding accordion-like brake/accelerate/brake cycles No, because each vehicle has different acceleration and deceleration rates. Watch any road with an incline and you will see congestion develop relatively quickly before the incline. And a traffic jam is inevitable when the bandwidth of a road has been exceeded. Each vehicle needs a certain amount of space in front of it, and behind it. The faster it goes, the more space it is, as well as if it’s heavy. This means for a given number of lanes, at a given speed, there exists a max number of vehicles. Once this maximum is exceeded, speed must drop as it is no longer safe to travel so close to vehicles in front and behind, and so bandwidth also drops. Hence, traffic jam. The different accel/decel rates contribute to the congestion also, as vehicles need varying amounts of time to fill the space in front of them. Bottom line, there is no solution to traffic jams other than reducing space needed to travel Per person (trains instead of cars), or increasing speeds (not possible in cars on current roads without exceeding acceptable safety risks), increasing the number of lanes (space is usually not available), and the easiest option, reduce the number of vehicles traveling the road via variable tolling based on congestion (currently the best option in my opinion).
- goranovich 7y ago
  They can't create underground paths or bridges on demand, they can die on the trail. Sometimes we move so slow that bumps don't matter.
- pif 7y ago
  > Ants on a trail typically have the same destination. In particular, they are working as a team. No single ant has any incentive to move faster than their teammates: the nest will be filled at the same speed, whether she gets there first or others do.
- jdnenej 7y ago
  Flying cars will never become the norm unless we work out how to produce infinite clean energy or how to turn off gravity. Traffic jams will be gone when city planners work out cars were not a good idea for transporting mass amounts of people.
- amhokies 7y ago
  I think once we have self-driving cars that are able to coordinate with each other, it will improve traffic significantly.
- moneytide1 7y ago
  As far as flying car charging stations go - we could use large microwave emitters (narrow beam): "A microwave-powered aircraft has lifting surfaces for exerting lifting forces on the aircraft in response to the propulsion of the aircraft and a rectenna array for receiving and rectifying microwave energy transmitted to the aircraft from a location remote from the aircraft. An electric motor for driving a propeller is energized by microwave energy received by the rectenna array, which is provided in a body at the underside of the aircraft. The body has its major dimensions extending horizontally and is relatively shallow with a periphery which is vertically curved so as to reduce turbulence in the airstream over the body during flight. The body is separate from the lifting surfaces and shaped to at least substantially avoid the generation of lifting forces by the body." https://patents.google.com/patent/US4955562A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US4955562A/en How much energy can a microwave emitter send across how far? If we're talking tens of kilowatts at a distance of 5-10 miles - emitter "turrets" would be situated on towers along a path between cities. Depending on the energy storage method aboard the passenger-ferrying aircraft - the tower would be sending a charge for the duration of a straight flight path travel time of several miles. If the craft has the energy storage for an average 50 miles of travel (70 miles after adding a safety buffer), then every 30 miles the craft would receive a charge behind a shield to protect passengers from intense microwave radiation focused on its rectenna. If the towers have a range of 5 miles, then that is 10 miles of charging since the craft flies towards, over, and away from the tower. Duration of a charge could increase if the craft has the altitude to glide and thus slow and stop running engines. Microwave induced amperage can increase as the craft gets closer to the source. Since this is for inter-city travel, the towers would be located on empty land where dozens of hectacres of solar panels could provide a local dedicated grid. Night flight may not be feasible unless there is a local dense energy source. We have to consider passenger air travel (likely automated) as traditional traffic, along a straight line, like Coruscant. Multiple towers and emitters at these charging points for high density intersections or for two way "highways". This could only work if these microwave emitters can send out high energy in a very narrow beam with the turret focusing precisely on the craft. It will kill any living thing in that path. Bird populations. Insect migrations. Unshielded passengers. Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser This type of "fueling station" means less weight required for the flying car's energy storage method. Traffic path charging happens intermittently at flight speeds instead of idled. ... probably just best to use a dense energy source and "fill up while parked" the traditional way before each trip?
fouc 7y ago
Motorbikes are practically immune to traffic jams, especially if they drive on the sidewalk.
- rubber_duck 7y ago
  Until someone randomly opens the door on you :(
- jdnenej 7y ago
  Basically everything that is not a car is immune to traffic jams outside of extraordinary situations like events with narrow exits.
OscarCunningham 7y ago
Looking at that video, a lot of the ants were walking into each other. Maybe their advantage is just that collisions have low cost so they can afford to use strategies that even among humans on foot would lead to a painful crash.
- z3phyr 7y ago
  They walk over each other too. We can't do that without causing minor or major injuries
  - chongli 7y ago
    Yeah exactly. Ants also move far slower than humans do. Even the world’s fastest ant only moves about 1 m/s, considerably slower than the average human walking speed of 1.4 m/s. People like to marvel at ants by taking everything they do and scaling it up. That’s not a valid thing to do, physically speaking. Kinetic energy is proportional to mass times velocity squared. Compared to humans, ants with negligible mass and very low velocity have minuscule kinetic energy when they collide.
    - ashton314 7y ago
      There are ants that move at 1 m/s?! That's terrifying. What kind of ant is that? Will it hurt if it bites me? How can I avoid this ant? ;-) Sure, not as fast as humans, but seeing something small (and potentially with big poisonous pincers) move at that speed is a little freaky.
      - chongli 7y ago
        The Saharan silver ant [1]. It’s actually only about 0.86 m/s but still quite fast for an ant. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saharan_silver_ant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saharan_silver_ant
        EamonnMR 7y ago
animal531 7y ago
I would consider the Ant Death Spiral to be a pretty bad traffic jam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0HoqjxfvJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0HoqjxfvJ4
- z3phyr 7y ago
  That's not a traffic jam. It's basically mass suicide after getting lost
  - jakobegger 7y ago
    According to the description, they didn't die, they somehow dispersed again after 30 minutes.
    - z3phyr 7y ago
      They were probably "found" by another "foraging party" of their own colony. Even if one of them regains active pheromone trail, all of them can safely return.
- EamonnMR 7y ago
  Bug exposed by an edge case. Apparently marked as WONTFIX.
YesThatTom2 7y ago
My summary of this article: Ants knew TCP flow-control long before Van Jacobson.
ptah 7y ago
it makes sense to up the speed limit during rush hour instead of the typical case for humans where we reduce it
ensiferum 7y ago
What has always puzzled me is that how is it possible that for example in the army a unit of thousand men can move as a single unit. Yet 5 cars stopped at the traffic lights can't do this but exhibit a latency accumulating between every single vehicle. If everyone just started moving when the light turns everyone could take off at the same time!
- almostarockstar 7y ago
  Except, if that were the case, all of the cars would then be travelling in very close proximity to each other. This would only work if we all stopped at the lights with the same space between stopped cars as moving cars. Of course, in a fully autonomous road network this is both possible, and mostly unnecessary, as nobody has to stop at traffic lights any more. Apart from pedestrian crossings of course.
- Xelbair 7y ago
  It is a matter of trust. In army you trust others to move with you. In car, you know that others won't move anyway so you wait and react to their behaviour. Army also moves in cohesive manner - unit is going towards known place. Car drivers do not know where others want to drive. Even the purpose of turn signals evade most drivers - they exist so you can signal your intention BEFORE manoeuvrer - most drivers turn them just before they need to, or even during the manoeuvrer.
  - ensiferum 7y ago
    Yes it was a rethoric question but anyway you said it and there's basically the answer to the question posed by the scientist. Trust and communication. In the army some chief gives the instructions. Everyone obeys the instructions (regardless of whether you trust or don't trust your adjacent soldiers to move as well). Seems the problem really is just the lack of co-operation and individualism that produces a negative externality for the society as a whole.
- Timpy 7y ago
  CGP Grey did a really nice, concise video on the topic of traffic and he addresses your point in the first 30 seconds. Coordination, not cars, is the problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE
DeusExMachina 7y ago
> In fact, compared to humans, these ants could load up the bridge with twice the capacity without slowing down. Then, on the next paragraph: > And they do this through self-imposed speed regulation. When it's moderately busy, for instance, the authors found the ants actually speed up, accelerating until a maximum flow or capacity is reached. Doesn't this mean that they do slow down?
- SimplyUnknown 7y ago
  I'm speculating that "slow down" in your first quote means "the flow doesn't plummet towards zero when it's busy" and in the second quote it means "reduce their average velocity". So in that sense they don't slow down (i.e. the colony doesn't grind to a halt) because they slow down (i.e. literally slowing down) Again, I'm speculating about the meaning but if I'm right then it's a poor choice of words from the author.
- penagwin 7y ago
  Yes individuals slow down, but it prevents the "traffic jam waves" you see with humans. Essentially each individual ant is going slightly slower so that the average throughput stays the same. You know how in traffic jams everyone is breaking, then speeding up - just to slam their breaks again? Ants prevent the breaks part by moving slower in the first place, which improves the traffic flow.
ossworkerrights 7y ago
"Traffic jams are ubiquitous in human society where individuals are pursuing their own personal objective," Perhaps humans don't have the option of walking / driving through wherever they please, and instead they have to use fixed roads / sidewalk? I'm pretty sure if we had the option of driving on dirt we would easily avoid traffic jams, as we'd just drive wherever we want.
- ellius 7y ago
  Valid point, but the article does mention that ants are at least somewhat constrained to the narrow paths laid out by their colony's pheromones.
sriram_iyengar 7y ago
Basis of the article is questionable. Humans slow down on traffic to avoid accidents. Ants don’t have that constraint. Neither will ants cause a stampede and can suffocate to death.
- spsful 7y ago
  The article frustrated me because it contradicts itself several times. >When it's moderately busy, for instance, the authors found the ants actually speed up, accelerating until a maximum flow or capacity is reached. Then from the next paragraph: >Plus, at high density times like this, the ants were found to change their behaviour and slow down to avoid more time-wasting collisions. Did I miss something here or does this legitimately make no sense?
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    At low density, ants move at a speed that maximizes efficiency. At medium density, they move a bit more briskly, sacrificing some energy to keep from blocking traffic. At high density, they move more deliberately, avoiding situations like we see on highways where a single vehicle advances rapidly but slows down many others as they brake to avoid it and cause a traffic wave.
  - darepublic 7y ago
    to me it reads as if (density == Density.Moderate) // speed up else if (density == Density.High) // slow down
k__ 7y ago
If there are hundreds of ants all carrying food home it's not important that one individual comes home quick. If I want to get home I don't have much to gain from 10 other people coming home first.
Kaiyou 7y ago
Watching someone improve traffic of game cities on Youtube I realized that traffic jams have more to do with how streets are laid out than with the behavior of drivers. If a city or more broadly speaking the street network was properly designed traffic jams would only happen in case of accidents or other unforeseeable traffic loads.
- donkeyd 7y ago
  You're working on the assumption that game traffic is a perfect representation of actual traffic. In reality, that's not the case though. In games, traffic on a straight road behaves perfectly. In real life, people cut others off, forget to check their blind spots, play on their phones, etc. This type of behavior often causes the 'out of nowhere' traffic jams. Someone brakes excessively because of one of the reasons above and people behind them brake even harder. Eventually some people will come to a stop and this will accordion for a while. You can play with this here: https://traffic-simulation.de/ https://traffic-simulation.de/ Especially try just disturbing an otherwise nice traffic flow.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    No, not in that game. People would cut into each others line all the time and generally behave stupidly. Also, if you have a traffic line where the behavior of the car in the front affects the cars behind it you already have bad traffic, which wouldn't happen with properly designed roads.
Steltek 7y ago
Because they're not ant roads, they're ant sidewalks? How can someone have such a blind spot of basic facts. Check out any street fair or large public outdoor event. People are going everywhere, despite a high density of people. It works because people are not driving.
- zaphod420 7y ago
  It's kind of amazing how selfish people become once they are driving a car. If people drove in a way that focused on keeping traffic flowing it would work, but cars are just big ego bubbles.
  - timerol 7y ago
    This is commonly believed but untrue. A certain volume of vehicles will drastically slow a road, regardless of how well people drive. Unless by "drove in a way that focused on keeping traffic flowing" you mean "wait in the on-ramp merge lane until rush hour ends". A corollary of the above fact is that autonomous cars won't save us. They might make traffic better by about 20%, but induced demand allows us to predict that speeds during rush hour won't actually get better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
    - mkagenius 7y ago
      Cars are truly one of the mistakes the human civilization latched on to. With fossil fuels going out of fashion, cars need to go too. We do not need car not even battery powered car. Maybe one car per 100 people is what should be okay for emergency purposes.
      - t34543 7y ago
        This is terribly inconsiderate of people with disabilities.
        pxndxx 7y ago
alikim 7y ago
I feel like a significant portion of human traffic jams are caused by bottlenecks but as far as I can tell this was not addressed in the study. Would be interested to see how much more efficient ants are in the case where the width of the path is variable.
lazyjones 7y ago
Perhaps our traffic jams are due to too many rules? Classic video that demonstrates an alternative way of doing things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEIn8GJIg0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEIn8GJIg0E
- johnisgood 7y ago
  You might want to read about Hans Monderman. > Monderman's work demonstrated that city and village streets become safer when they are stripped of traffic controls so that drivers must take cues from observing people rather than signs. Though it sounds chaotic, the results of Shared Space have shown to be just the opposite: traffic moves slower and the rate of major accidents declines drastically. > His design approach is the concept of "shared space", an urban design approach that seeks to minimise demarcations between vehicle traffic and pedestrians, often by removing features such as kerbs, road surface markings, traffic signs, and regulations. Monderman found that the traffic efficiency and safety improved when the street and surrounding public space was redesigned to encourage each person to negotiate their movement directly with others. https://www.pps.org/article/hans-monderman https://www.pps.org/article/hans-monderman https://www.pps.org/article/shared-space https://www.pps.org/article/shared-space https://www.maharam.com/stories/rawsthorn_hans-mondermans-naked-streets https://www.maharam.com/stories/rawsthorn_hans-mondermans-na... For the record: > First implemented in his native Netherlands, Monderman’s designs have since spread throughout Europe, South Africa, Australia, Japan, and Brazil, and Canada. They are also making an appearance in often car-dominated U.S. cities such as Pittsburgh, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Chicago. > "It's a moving away from regulated, legislated traffic toward space which, by the way it's designed and configured, makes it clear what sort of behavior is anticipated," said Ben Hamilton-Baillie, an English urban designer who coined the phrase Shared Space after trying out Monderman's controversial ideas in his hometown of Bristol. Hamilton-Baillie now promotes Shared Space projects in Germany, Belgium, and Denmark as part of an ongoing project of the European Union.
  - lazyjones 7y ago
    This line of thought has become very popular among city planners here in Austria, but I've seen it implemented in 2 different ways: - in Vienna, they give priority to pedestrians in such shared zones, cars have to go very slowly and often struggle with large numbers of people in areas frequented by tourists. There is also a lot of confusion around the question where cars are actually allowed to go and when - in some tourist areas in Italy, where lower traffic roads have no sidewalks and cars go 30 Km/h, pedestrians walk on the edge of the street. This seems just as safe and less frustrating for drivers.
CryptoPunk 7y ago
Because ants are genetically adapted to act selflessly, given they are a colony. Humans need externally imposed incentives to act cooperatively, which is where government and private property comes in.
- misterdoubt 7y ago
  Do we, though?
imgabe 7y ago
> Whereas, when a trail is overcrowded, the ants restrained themselves and avoided joining until things thinned out. This sounds a lot like how traffic waves [1] occur. When there's a traffic jam ahead, you can often help clear it out just by slowing down to the average speed it's moving. Going a steady 10mph is much better than going 30mph for 1/3 of the time and then being stopped for 2/3 of the time. If everyone can start going smoothly at 10mph it will eventually speed up. Traffic jams occur because cars are arriving at some point on the road faster than they can leave that point. If the cars coming towards it just slow down to allow the cars there time to leave, the jam will clear. [1] http://trafficwaves.org/ http://trafficwaves.org/
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  They can be stable for a long time! I saw one of these early one Saturday morning on I280 in San Jose. I presume it started with congestion during Friday night commute. It was still there at 7AM - cars adding to the back, slowing to a stop for an instant then starting up again and zooming away from the front. All for no apparent reason (no accident/no other congestion on the freeway anywhere).
  - btilly 7y ago
    Freeways tend to clear out at 3 AM. So I would presume that it started that morning. Perhaps with a minor fender bender an hour earlier. That said, I try to clear those up when I see them.
  - Johnny555 7y ago
    The other problem in the Bay Area is that cars don't know how to merge and no one wants to let another driver in front of them. Packs of 5 or more cars driving close to each other will try to merge in to the freeway with cars on the freeway, who also have little space between them. So eventually everyone needs to brake and it slows everyone else down. And turn signals are seen as a sign of weakness -- cars will actually speed up to close a gap when you signal.
- CogitoCogito 7y ago
  I use this method to an extent, but the unfortunate result often becomes people zipping in in front of you when you inevitably have a bit of extra space compared to those around you. This seems to leave you with two problems which are hard to solve simultaneously. The first is the one you mention where you want to keep a mostly constant speed compared to the whole group. The second is the effective need to locally keep up with the cars around you. Solving both problems simultaneously seems essentially impossible. I guess removing self-interest is the only real way (which appears to be what the ants do).
mrfredward 7y ago
A major oversight here is rate of acceleration. Every organism and vehicle on earth has the same gravity and similar coefficients of friction to work with, so rates of acceleration have roughly the same cap, but the speeds change by orders of magnitude. So an ant can go from full speed, to stopped, to full speed in a fraction of a second. A car on the highway will take several seconds to stop, and much longer to smoothly accelerate, leading to standing wave type effects on highways. This is much less likely with people walking, and even less likely with ants. The dynamics of cars on the highway is governed by the difficulty of changing speed and direction. For ants, this constraint is negligible. So these things don't really compare.
- jerf 7y ago
  I also really loved the throwaway about ants not caring about collision. I can "solve" a lot of traffic problems too, if nobody involved is worried about collisions.
  - GrumpyNl 7y ago
    Thats like driving in India in with a three wheeler taxi.
  - Johnny555 7y ago
    I think that's part of the promise of self-driving cars -- they'll ostensibly be safer, so can drive closer together, and can cooperate at intersections to increase throughput, no one needs to stop, just adjust speed to allow a gap. Though based on my car's adaptive cruise control ability, we've got a long way to go before we can have cars that drive within a few feet of each other at highway speeds, and even longer before we could have intersections without signals (or stops).
    - alpaca128 7y ago
      I don't know if this promise will ever be real in that extent. Even if you assume perfect drivers(automatic or not) with instant reaction speed there can be situations where a road can become impassable quickly due to external influences, and this alone makes short distances between cars unsafe. All it takes is one rock dropping onto the road heavy enough to immediately stop a car in its tracks, and what would follow would be a series of collisions affecting a large number of cars. Then you need to leave gaps for new arrivals from a different road, and in the end I don't think the efficiency would be that much higher.
1xdeveloper 7y ago
I wonder what the effect would be if they measured ants from different colonies on the same trail?
- dave_b 7y ago
  I imagine the breakout of total war would cause moderate to severe traffic congestion.
tempsy 7y ago
Actually really interesting to think about how self driving cars would be impacted. In a world where 100% of cars are self-driving, but algorithms are manufacturer-specific, how much more efficient would driving really be? It would seem like if all cars were operated by the same algorithm then you'd be able to build something that was more "ant colony" like that would similarly improve driving efficiency?
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  Even without higher-level coordination, independent autonomous agents on the road could still do a lot better than human drivers in at least two ways: a) the jam-busting behaviour described elsewhere on this thread could be built in, avoiding the counterproductive and unnecessary stop-and-go pattern that most human drivers seem to fall into, and b) even when traffic unavoidably comes to a standstill, a self-driving car could have near-instant reaction time on stopping and starting, meaning that the wave propagation would be much faster. This second point is basically saying that if there's a pileup, yes the whole roadway will stop while it's cleared, but the moment a lane opens up, autonomous cars will be able to more efficiently and immediately use it to get the whole jam moving forward.
Jollyton 7y ago
Nice and well thought out write up about the ant. Ants are always busy and preoccupied fulfilling one task or the other. Despite this, there is great team work and selflessness among the ants, which humanity can learn from and have a better society.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Well, anthropomorphism aside, ants kill and eat their peers if they detect damage or aberrant behavior. They behave as they do, because it is beneficial to the queen, whose future is the only one that matters.
idlewords 7y ago
This is because they don't drive.
carc1n0gen 7y ago
I read ant as aunt and was very confused, then realized what happened once opening the link.
pks016 7y ago
I used to study ants;Diacamma sp. in India (not the pheromone laying one). These ants transport individuals through a method called tandem running. There is also traffic-jam in this species if we narrow the path. Here, also there is no change in dynamics in the way these ants relocate even when there is traffic jam (to be published). Interesting to see similar methods adopted by ants even though the transport method is different.
thisisbrians 7y ago
I live and work in downtown Austin. I frequently walk (about a mile each way) to/from my office, so I spend a lot of time interacting with and observing traffic patterns in a very automobile-congested area. One of the biggest issues I've witnessed is how frequently drivers will proceed into an intersection even though there isn't enough space ahead of them to clear the intersection. Then, the signal changes, and they are left blocking one or more travel lanes perpendicular to their vehicle, thereby spoiling the precious open road for the unfortunate motorists who are left to deal with their selfishness or inattentiveness. I see this happen almost daily, so I can only imagine how often it actually occurs when I'm not around to witness it. I wonder how much this slows the whole system down just so that a few folks can hopefully get where they're going one traffic light-cycle sooner. I'd be mortified to be sitting in one of these cars getting honked and glared at for my complete and utter lack of consideration towards others, but I guess selfishness is a powerful enough force to keep people driving like assholes regardless.
- steveklabnik 7y ago
  I also live and work in downtown Austin, and see this all the time too. It's... less than ideal, for sure. At least when people block the pedestrian crossing, (which is also something I encounter daily) it just makes it awkward, rather than gumming up traffic too.
  - thisisbrians 7y ago
    Rad, didn't know you'd moved to Austin. We are using Rust for a couple projects at my startup now: bractlet.com
    - steveklabnik 7y ago
      Oh cool! If you ever want to grab a coffee or something, let me know :) we’re also doing rust lunches every other week downtown.
- mLuby 7y ago
  Is this apparently anti-social behavior evenly distributed among a bumbling, apologetic population or concentrated in a few selfish sociopaths? Traffic cams could answer this question…
sigmonsays 7y ago
I think this article implies we operate like an ant colony with a single goal. I may be mistaken but we humans dont't have a single goal so our priorities are different.

191 points by laktak 7y ago

Ants can create new paths on demand. Ants on a trail typically have the same destination. Ants aren't going to park on the already tiny trail unlike humans. Bumps, potholes slow down cars and limit ability to increase speed unlike ants. We'll be finally able to traffic jam free when flying cars become the norm.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
handWavey 7y ago
Flying cars won't become the norm, because too many people lack the cognitive traits and skills required to fly a vehicle. I'm being charitable with my words. From cradle to grave, the overwhelming majority of people you interact with every day are too unreliable to entrust with flying vehicles. From childhood, to adulthood, to old age, most people would not, should not, could not perform well as pilots of flying vehicles. They don't have it in them. So, this being HN, let's break out the tool box filled with buzzwords. Flying cars, after all, are just another nail, and we have plenty of software hammers to hit it with. Hey! I know, what about machine learning? AI! Self driving cars that can fly! One thing missing from that equation is faith in the software development life cycle, and a belief that we can engineer life saving systems, like drawing water from a faucet. Eh, not so much. Why, if I were king, it would've already happened! ...probably not so much.
donmatito 7y ago
That's not what the article is saying. They have tested ant flow on narrow bridges where additional lanes aren't possible. From the article: "they do this through self-imposed speed regulation. When it's moderately busy, for instance, the authors found the ants actually speed up, accelerating until a maximum flow or capacity is reached. Whereas, when a trail is overcrowded, the ants restrained themselves and avoided joining until things thinned out. Plus, at high density times like this, the ants were found to change their behaviour and slow down to avoid more time-wasting collisions." We'll be finally able to traffic jam free when autopilot will make us slow appropriately in high density conditions, avoiding accordion-like brake/accelerate/brake cycles
- pif 7y ago
  > We'll be finally able to traffic jam free when autopilot will make us slow appropriately in high density conditions... It looks wonderful! Just, please, add the option into your autopilot to let me pass before playing with the best jam-reabsorbing strategy! I need to go places, not like the rest of you who hit the road just for fun!
- CodesInChaos 7y ago
  Congestion dependent speed limits have been in use for a long time on German highways.
  - Spare_account 7y ago
    The principle is sound, but the ants actually obey the rules whereas (in the UK at least) a small contingent of human drivers will ignore the limits, speeding up and slowing down between enforcement cameras. This concertina effect from just a small number of drivers is enough to slow the entire flow of traffic.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      It would have happened anyway after a certain density of vehicles is exceeded, since each car and truck had different accel/decel rates. Especially if there is an incline anywhere.
  - donmatito 7y ago
    yes, speed reduction on the Paris belt was also done in order to reduce traffic jams. The argument was "peak speed is slower, but apart from night/holidays situation with empty road, you'll actually get faster to where you're going because of less jams"
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  > We'll be finally able to traffic jam free when autopilot will make us slow appropriately in high density conditions, avoiding accordion-like brake/accelerate/brake cycles No, because each vehicle has different acceleration and deceleration rates. Watch any road with an incline and you will see congestion develop relatively quickly before the incline. And a traffic jam is inevitable when the bandwidth of a road has been exceeded. Each vehicle needs a certain amount of space in front of it, and behind it. The faster it goes, the more space it is, as well as if it’s heavy. This means for a given number of lanes, at a given speed, there exists a max number of vehicles. Once this maximum is exceeded, speed must drop as it is no longer safe to travel so close to vehicles in front and behind, and so bandwidth also drops. Hence, traffic jam. The different accel/decel rates contribute to the congestion also, as vehicles need varying amounts of time to fill the space in front of them. Bottom line, there is no solution to traffic jams other than reducing space needed to travel Per person (trains instead of cars), or increasing speeds (not possible in cars on current roads without exceeding acceptable safety risks), increasing the number of lanes (space is usually not available), and the easiest option, reduce the number of vehicles traveling the road via variable tolling based on congestion (currently the best option in my opinion).
goranovich 7y ago
They can't create underground paths or bridges on demand, they can die on the trail. Sometimes we move so slow that bumps don't matter.
pif 7y ago
> Ants on a trail typically have the same destination. In particular, they are working as a team. No single ant has any incentive to move faster than their teammates: the nest will be filled at the same speed, whether she gets there first or others do.
jdnenej 7y ago
Flying cars will never become the norm unless we work out how to produce infinite clean energy or how to turn off gravity. Traffic jams will be gone when city planners work out cars were not a good idea for transporting mass amounts of people.
amhokies 7y ago
I think once we have self-driving cars that are able to coordinate with each other, it will improve traffic significantly.
moneytide1 7y ago
As far as flying car charging stations go - we could use large microwave emitters (narrow beam): "A microwave-powered aircraft has lifting surfaces for exerting lifting forces on the aircraft in response to the propulsion of the aircraft and a rectenna array for receiving and rectifying microwave energy transmitted to the aircraft from a location remote from the aircraft. An electric motor for driving a propeller is energized by microwave energy received by the rectenna array, which is provided in a body at the underside of the aircraft. The body has its major dimensions extending horizontally and is relatively shallow with a periphery which is vertically curved so as to reduce turbulence in the airstream over the body during flight. The body is separate from the lifting surfaces and shaped to at least substantially avoid the generation of lifting forces by the body." https://patents.google.com/patent/US4955562A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US4955562A/en How much energy can a microwave emitter send across how far? If we're talking tens of kilowatts at a distance of 5-10 miles - emitter "turrets" would be situated on towers along a path between cities. Depending on the energy storage method aboard the passenger-ferrying aircraft - the tower would be sending a charge for the duration of a straight flight path travel time of several miles. If the craft has the energy storage for an average 50 miles of travel (70 miles after adding a safety buffer), then every 30 miles the craft would receive a charge behind a shield to protect passengers from intense microwave radiation focused on its rectenna. If the towers have a range of 5 miles, then that is 10 miles of charging since the craft flies towards, over, and away from the tower. Duration of a charge could increase if the craft has the altitude to glide and thus slow and stop running engines. Microwave induced amperage can increase as the craft gets closer to the source. Since this is for inter-city travel, the towers would be located on empty land where dozens of hectacres of solar panels could provide a local dedicated grid. Night flight may not be feasible unless there is a local dense energy source. We have to consider passenger air travel (likely automated) as traditional traffic, along a straight line, like Coruscant. Multiple towers and emitters at these charging points for high density intersections or for two way "highways". This could only work if these microwave emitters can send out high energy in a very narrow beam with the turret focusing precisely on the craft. It will kill any living thing in that path. Bird populations. Insect migrations. Unshielded passengers. Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser This type of "fueling station" means less weight required for the flying car's energy storage method. Traffic path charging happens intermittently at flight speeds instead of idled. ... probably just best to use a dense energy source and "fill up while parked" the traditional way before each trip?

fouc 7y ago

Motorbikes are practically immune to traffic jams, especially if they drive on the sidewalk.

rubber_duck 7y ago
Until someone randomly opens the door on you :(
jdnenej 7y ago
Basically everything that is not a car is immune to traffic jams outside of extraordinary situations like events with narrow exits.

OscarCunningham 7y ago

Looking at that video, a lot of the ants were walking into each other. Maybe their advantage is just that collisions have low cost so they can afford to use strategies that even among humans on foot would lead to a painful crash.

z3phyr 7y ago
They walk over each other too. We can't do that without causing minor or major injuries
- chongli 7y ago
  Yeah exactly. Ants also move far slower than humans do. Even the world’s fastest ant only moves about 1 m/s, considerably slower than the average human walking speed of 1.4 m/s. People like to marvel at ants by taking everything they do and scaling it up. That’s not a valid thing to do, physically speaking. Kinetic energy is proportional to mass times velocity squared. Compared to humans, ants with negligible mass and very low velocity have minuscule kinetic energy when they collide.
  - ashton314 7y ago
    There are ants that move at 1 m/s?! That's terrifying. What kind of ant is that? Will it hurt if it bites me? How can I avoid this ant? ;-) Sure, not as fast as humans, but seeing something small (and potentially with big poisonous pincers) move at that speed is a little freaky.
    - chongli 7y ago
      The Saharan silver ant [1]. It’s actually only about 0.86 m/s but still quite fast for an ant. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saharan_silver_ant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saharan_silver_ant
      - EamonnMR 7y ago

animal531 7y ago

I would consider the Ant Death Spiral to be a pretty bad traffic jam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0HoqjxfvJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0HoqjxfvJ4

z3phyr 7y ago
That's not a traffic jam. It's basically mass suicide after getting lost
- jakobegger 7y ago
  According to the description, they didn't die, they somehow dispersed again after 30 minutes.
  - z3phyr 7y ago
    They were probably "found" by another "foraging party" of their own colony. Even if one of them regains active pheromone trail, all of them can safely return.
EamonnMR 7y ago
Bug exposed by an edge case. Apparently marked as WONTFIX.

YesThatTom2 7y ago

My summary of this article: Ants knew TCP flow-control long before Van Jacobson.

ptah 7y ago

it makes sense to up the speed limit during rush hour instead of the typical case for humans where we reduce it

ensiferum 7y ago

What has always puzzled me is that how is it possible that for example in the army a unit of thousand men can move as a single unit. Yet 5 cars stopped at the traffic lights can't do this but exhibit a latency accumulating between every single vehicle. If everyone just started moving when the light turns everyone could take off at the same time!

almostarockstar 7y ago
Except, if that were the case, all of the cars would then be travelling in very close proximity to each other. This would only work if we all stopped at the lights with the same space between stopped cars as moving cars. Of course, in a fully autonomous road network this is both possible, and mostly unnecessary, as nobody has to stop at traffic lights any more. Apart from pedestrian crossings of course.
Xelbair 7y ago
It is a matter of trust. In army you trust others to move with you. In car, you know that others won't move anyway so you wait and react to their behaviour. Army also moves in cohesive manner - unit is going towards known place. Car drivers do not know where others want to drive. Even the purpose of turn signals evade most drivers - they exist so you can signal your intention BEFORE manoeuvrer - most drivers turn them just before they need to, or even during the manoeuvrer.
- ensiferum 7y ago
  Yes it was a rethoric question but anyway you said it and there's basically the answer to the question posed by the scientist. Trust and communication. In the army some chief gives the instructions. Everyone obeys the instructions (regardless of whether you trust or don't trust your adjacent soldiers to move as well). Seems the problem really is just the lack of co-operation and individualism that produces a negative externality for the society as a whole.
Timpy 7y ago
CGP Grey did a really nice, concise video on the topic of traffic and he addresses your point in the first 30 seconds. Coordination, not cars, is the problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE

DeusExMachina 7y ago

> In fact, compared to humans, these ants could load up the bridge with twice the capacity without slowing down. Then, on the next paragraph: > And they do this through self-imposed speed regulation. When it's moderately busy, for instance, the authors found the ants actually speed up, accelerating until a maximum flow or capacity is reached. Doesn't this mean that they do slow down?

SimplyUnknown 7y ago
I'm speculating that "slow down" in your first quote means "the flow doesn't plummet towards zero when it's busy" and in the second quote it means "reduce their average velocity". So in that sense they don't slow down (i.e. the colony doesn't grind to a halt) because they slow down (i.e. literally slowing down) Again, I'm speculating about the meaning but if I'm right then it's a poor choice of words from the author.
penagwin 7y ago
Yes individuals slow down, but it prevents the "traffic jam waves" you see with humans. Essentially each individual ant is going slightly slower so that the average throughput stays the same. You know how in traffic jams everyone is breaking, then speeding up - just to slam their breaks again? Ants prevent the breaks part by moving slower in the first place, which improves the traffic flow.

ossworkerrights 7y ago

"Traffic jams are ubiquitous in human society where individuals are pursuing their own personal objective," Perhaps humans don't have the option of walking / driving through wherever they please, and instead they have to use fixed roads / sidewalk? I'm pretty sure if we had the option of driving on dirt we would easily avoid traffic jams, as we'd just drive wherever we want.

ellius 7y ago
Valid point, but the article does mention that ants are at least somewhat constrained to the narrow paths laid out by their colony's pheromones.

sriram_iyengar 7y ago

Basis of the article is questionable. Humans slow down on traffic to avoid accidents. Ants don’t have that constraint. Neither will ants cause a stampede and can suffocate to death.

spsful 7y ago
The article frustrated me because it contradicts itself several times. >When it's moderately busy, for instance, the authors found the ants actually speed up, accelerating until a maximum flow or capacity is reached. Then from the next paragraph: >Plus, at high density times like this, the ants were found to change their behaviour and slow down to avoid more time-wasting collisions. Did I miss something here or does this legitimately make no sense?
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  At low density, ants move at a speed that maximizes efficiency. At medium density, they move a bit more briskly, sacrificing some energy to keep from blocking traffic. At high density, they move more deliberately, avoiding situations like we see on highways where a single vehicle advances rapidly but slows down many others as they brake to avoid it and cause a traffic wave.
- darepublic 7y ago
  to me it reads as if (density == Density.Moderate) // speed up else if (density == Density.High) // slow down

k__ 7y ago

If there are hundreds of ants all carrying food home it's not important that one individual comes home quick. If I want to get home I don't have much to gain from 10 other people coming home first.

Kaiyou 7y ago

Watching someone improve traffic of game cities on Youtube I realized that traffic jams have more to do with how streets are laid out than with the behavior of drivers. If a city or more broadly speaking the street network was properly designed traffic jams would only happen in case of accidents or other unforeseeable traffic loads.

donkeyd 7y ago
You're working on the assumption that game traffic is a perfect representation of actual traffic. In reality, that's not the case though. In games, traffic on a straight road behaves perfectly. In real life, people cut others off, forget to check their blind spots, play on their phones, etc. This type of behavior often causes the 'out of nowhere' traffic jams. Someone brakes excessively because of one of the reasons above and people behind them brake even harder. Eventually some people will come to a stop and this will accordion for a while. You can play with this here: https://traffic-simulation.de/ https://traffic-simulation.de/ Especially try just disturbing an otherwise nice traffic flow.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  No, not in that game. People would cut into each others line all the time and generally behave stupidly. Also, if you have a traffic line where the behavior of the car in the front affects the cars behind it you already have bad traffic, which wouldn't happen with properly designed roads.

Steltek 7y ago

Because they're not ant roads, they're ant sidewalks? How can someone have such a blind spot of basic facts. Check out any street fair or large public outdoor event. People are going everywhere, despite a high density of people. It works because people are not driving.

zaphod420 7y ago
It's kind of amazing how selfish people become once they are driving a car. If people drove in a way that focused on keeping traffic flowing it would work, but cars are just big ego bubbles.
- timerol 7y ago
  This is commonly believed but untrue. A certain volume of vehicles will drastically slow a road, regardless of how well people drive. Unless by "drove in a way that focused on keeping traffic flowing" you mean "wait in the on-ramp merge lane until rush hour ends". A corollary of the above fact is that autonomous cars won't save us. They might make traffic better by about 20%, but induced demand allows us to predict that speeds during rush hour won't actually get better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
  - mkagenius 7y ago
    Cars are truly one of the mistakes the human civilization latched on to. With fossil fuels going out of fashion, cars need to go too. We do not need car not even battery powered car. Maybe one car per 100 people is what should be okay for emergency purposes.
    - t34543 7y ago
      This is terribly inconsiderate of people with disabilities.
      - pxndxx 7y ago

alikim 7y ago

I feel like a significant portion of human traffic jams are caused by bottlenecks but as far as I can tell this was not addressed in the study. Would be interested to see how much more efficient ants are in the case where the width of the path is variable.

lazyjones 7y ago

Perhaps our traffic jams are due to too many rules? Classic video that demonstrates an alternative way of doing things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEIn8GJIg0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEIn8GJIg0E

johnisgood 7y ago
You might want to read about Hans Monderman. > Monderman's work demonstrated that city and village streets become safer when they are stripped of traffic controls so that drivers must take cues from observing people rather than signs. Though it sounds chaotic, the results of Shared Space have shown to be just the opposite: traffic moves slower and the rate of major accidents declines drastically. > His design approach is the concept of "shared space", an urban design approach that seeks to minimise demarcations between vehicle traffic and pedestrians, often by removing features such as kerbs, road surface markings, traffic signs, and regulations. Monderman found that the traffic efficiency and safety improved when the street and surrounding public space was redesigned to encourage each person to negotiate their movement directly with others. https://www.pps.org/article/hans-monderman https://www.pps.org/article/hans-monderman https://www.pps.org/article/shared-space https://www.pps.org/article/shared-space https://www.maharam.com/stories/rawsthorn_hans-mondermans-naked-streets https://www.maharam.com/stories/rawsthorn_hans-mondermans-na... For the record: > First implemented in his native Netherlands, Monderman’s designs have since spread throughout Europe, South Africa, Australia, Japan, and Brazil, and Canada. They are also making an appearance in often car-dominated U.S. cities such as Pittsburgh, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Chicago. > "It's a moving away from regulated, legislated traffic toward space which, by the way it's designed and configured, makes it clear what sort of behavior is anticipated," said Ben Hamilton-Baillie, an English urban designer who coined the phrase Shared Space after trying out Monderman's controversial ideas in his hometown of Bristol. Hamilton-Baillie now promotes Shared Space projects in Germany, Belgium, and Denmark as part of an ongoing project of the European Union.
- lazyjones 7y ago
  This line of thought has become very popular among city planners here in Austria, but I've seen it implemented in 2 different ways: - in Vienna, they give priority to pedestrians in such shared zones, cars have to go very slowly and often struggle with large numbers of people in areas frequented by tourists. There is also a lot of confusion around the question where cars are actually allowed to go and when - in some tourist areas in Italy, where lower traffic roads have no sidewalks and cars go 30 Km/h, pedestrians walk on the edge of the street. This seems just as safe and less frustrating for drivers.

CryptoPunk 7y ago

Because ants are genetically adapted to act selflessly, given they are a colony. Humans need externally imposed incentives to act cooperatively, which is where government and private property comes in.

misterdoubt 7y ago
Do we, though?

imgabe 7y ago

> Whereas, when a trail is overcrowded, the ants restrained themselves and avoided joining until things thinned out. This sounds a lot like how traffic waves [1] occur. When there's a traffic jam ahead, you can often help clear it out just by slowing down to the average speed it's moving. Going a steady 10mph is much better than going 30mph for 1/3 of the time and then being stopped for 2/3 of the time. If everyone can start going smoothly at 10mph it will eventually speed up. Traffic jams occur because cars are arriving at some point on the road faster than they can leave that point. If the cars coming towards it just slow down to allow the cars there time to leave, the jam will clear. [1] http://trafficwaves.org/ http://trafficwaves.org/

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
They can be stable for a long time! I saw one of these early one Saturday morning on I280 in San Jose. I presume it started with congestion during Friday night commute. It was still there at 7AM - cars adding to the back, slowing to a stop for an instant then starting up again and zooming away from the front. All for no apparent reason (no accident/no other congestion on the freeway anywhere).
- btilly 7y ago
  Freeways tend to clear out at 3 AM. So I would presume that it started that morning. Perhaps with a minor fender bender an hour earlier. That said, I try to clear those up when I see them.
- Johnny555 7y ago
  The other problem in the Bay Area is that cars don't know how to merge and no one wants to let another driver in front of them. Packs of 5 or more cars driving close to each other will try to merge in to the freeway with cars on the freeway, who also have little space between them. So eventually everyone needs to brake and it slows everyone else down. And turn signals are seen as a sign of weakness -- cars will actually speed up to close a gap when you signal.
CogitoCogito 7y ago
I use this method to an extent, but the unfortunate result often becomes people zipping in in front of you when you inevitably have a bit of extra space compared to those around you. This seems to leave you with two problems which are hard to solve simultaneously. The first is the one you mention where you want to keep a mostly constant speed compared to the whole group. The second is the effective need to locally keep up with the cars around you. Solving both problems simultaneously seems essentially impossible. I guess removing self-interest is the only real way (which appears to be what the ants do).

mrfredward 7y ago

A major oversight here is rate of acceleration. Every organism and vehicle on earth has the same gravity and similar coefficients of friction to work with, so rates of acceleration have roughly the same cap, but the speeds change by orders of magnitude. So an ant can go from full speed, to stopped, to full speed in a fraction of a second. A car on the highway will take several seconds to stop, and much longer to smoothly accelerate, leading to standing wave type effects on highways. This is much less likely with people walking, and even less likely with ants. The dynamics of cars on the highway is governed by the difficulty of changing speed and direction. For ants, this constraint is negligible. So these things don't really compare.

jerf 7y ago
I also really loved the throwaway about ants not caring about collision. I can "solve" a lot of traffic problems too, if nobody involved is worried about collisions.
- GrumpyNl 7y ago
  Thats like driving in India in with a three wheeler taxi.
- Johnny555 7y ago
  I think that's part of the promise of self-driving cars -- they'll ostensibly be safer, so can drive closer together, and can cooperate at intersections to increase throughput, no one needs to stop, just adjust speed to allow a gap. Though based on my car's adaptive cruise control ability, we've got a long way to go before we can have cars that drive within a few feet of each other at highway speeds, and even longer before we could have intersections without signals (or stops).
  - alpaca128 7y ago
    I don't know if this promise will ever be real in that extent. Even if you assume perfect drivers(automatic or not) with instant reaction speed there can be situations where a road can become impassable quickly due to external influences, and this alone makes short distances between cars unsafe. All it takes is one rock dropping onto the road heavy enough to immediately stop a car in its tracks, and what would follow would be a series of collisions affecting a large number of cars. Then you need to leave gaps for new arrivals from a different road, and in the end I don't think the efficiency would be that much higher.

1xdeveloper 7y ago

I wonder what the effect would be if they measured ants from different colonies on the same trail?

dave_b 7y ago
I imagine the breakout of total war would cause moderate to severe traffic congestion.

tempsy 7y ago

Actually really interesting to think about how self driving cars would be impacted. In a world where 100% of cars are self-driving, but algorithms are manufacturer-specific, how much more efficient would driving really be? It would seem like if all cars were operated by the same algorithm then you'd be able to build something that was more "ant colony" like that would similarly improve driving efficiency?

mikepurvis 7y ago
Even without higher-level coordination, independent autonomous agents on the road could still do a lot better than human drivers in at least two ways: a) the jam-busting behaviour described elsewhere on this thread could be built in, avoiding the counterproductive and unnecessary stop-and-go pattern that most human drivers seem to fall into, and b) even when traffic unavoidably comes to a standstill, a self-driving car could have near-instant reaction time on stopping and starting, meaning that the wave propagation would be much faster. This second point is basically saying that if there's a pileup, yes the whole roadway will stop while it's cleared, but the moment a lane opens up, autonomous cars will be able to more efficiently and immediately use it to get the whole jam moving forward.

Jollyton 7y ago

Nice and well thought out write up about the ant. Ants are always busy and preoccupied fulfilling one task or the other. Despite this, there is great team work and selflessness among the ants, which humanity can learn from and have a better society.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Well, anthropomorphism aside, ants kill and eat their peers if they detect damage or aberrant behavior. They behave as they do, because it is beneficial to the queen, whose future is the only one that matters.

idlewords 7y ago

This is because they don't drive.

carc1n0gen 7y ago

I read ant as aunt and was very confused, then realized what happened once opening the link.

pks016 7y ago

I used to study ants;Diacamma sp. in India (not the pheromone laying one). These ants transport individuals through a method called tandem running. There is also traffic-jam in this species if we narrow the path. Here, also there is no change in dynamics in the way these ants relocate even when there is traffic jam (to be published). Interesting to see similar methods adopted by ants even though the transport method is different.

thisisbrians 7y ago

I live and work in downtown Austin. I frequently walk (about a mile each way) to/from my office, so I spend a lot of time interacting with and observing traffic patterns in a very automobile-congested area. One of the biggest issues I've witnessed is how frequently drivers will proceed into an intersection even though there isn't enough space ahead of them to clear the intersection. Then, the signal changes, and they are left blocking one or more travel lanes perpendicular to their vehicle, thereby spoiling the precious open road for the unfortunate motorists who are left to deal with their selfishness or inattentiveness. I see this happen almost daily, so I can only imagine how often it actually occurs when I'm not around to witness it. I wonder how much this slows the whole system down just so that a few folks can hopefully get where they're going one traffic light-cycle sooner. I'd be mortified to be sitting in one of these cars getting honked and glared at for my complete and utter lack of consideration towards others, but I guess selfishness is a powerful enough force to keep people driving like assholes regardless.

steveklabnik 7y ago
I also live and work in downtown Austin, and see this all the time too. It's... less than ideal, for sure. At least when people block the pedestrian crossing, (which is also something I encounter daily) it just makes it awkward, rather than gumming up traffic too.
- thisisbrians 7y ago
  Rad, didn't know you'd moved to Austin. We are using Rust for a couple projects at my startup now: bractlet.com
  - steveklabnik 7y ago
    Oh cool! If you ever want to grab a coffee or something, let me know :) we’re also doing rust lunches every other week downtown.
mLuby 7y ago
Is this apparently anti-social behavior evenly distributed among a bumbling, apologetic population or concentrated in a few selfish sociopaths? Traffic cams could answer this question…

sigmonsays 7y ago

I think this article implies we operate like an ant colony with a single goal. I may be mistaken but we humans dont't have a single goal so our priorities are different.