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A pet peeve of mine when I still drove was when drivers would leave 1-3 car length's in front of their car when stopped at a stoplight. And then after the car i

A pet peeve of mine when I still drove was when drivers would leave 1-3 car length's in front of their car when stopped at a stoplight. And then after the car in front starts moving, it'd take them a solid second to start inching forward also. The bigger problem was that this type of behavior was the norm to the point where at slow speed intersections with stoplights (e.g. city streets around college campuses), only a single digit number of cars would be able to go through per green light.

sandworm101 6y ago
Or worse yet, they leave so much space that they don't trigger the sensors. That can mess with the traffic management scheme, sometimes preventing a light from ever changing.
kiliantics 6y ago
Putting more people through per stoplight doesn't really change much. You just get more people at the next stop light. The light is by far the limiting factor, not the drivers. That's why polite driving actually helps, because you get less people blocking each other and less mishaps, the things that actually slow everything down.
- dmurray 6y ago
  You've never been stopped at a light where the queue was many multiples of the number of cars that could get through in one cycle?
  - function_seven 6y ago
    Or more infuriating, when you want to make a left turn, but the dedicated lane for that is unreachable until the queue in front of you moves through the intersection. And some inattentive driver ahead misses the light and leaves you with an opening that is exactly 1 foot narrower than your car.
  - kiliantics 6y ago
    That still doesn't mean someone leaving a bit of space or a few seconds time between you and the light changes anything. You're still just going on to another stop light afterwards, which is a much larger limiting factor and the de facto limiting factor in traffic design. Too many people misunderstand this, leading to unnecessary aggressive driving. Understanding the basics of traffic mechanics should really be part of the exam in getting your licence.
ninkendo 6y ago
> And then after the car in front starts moving, it'd take them a solid second to start inching forward also. Indeed, the most influential slider in the simulation seems to be the “max acceleration” one... if people accelerate quickly up to their max speed it seems to prevent traffic waves from propagating backwards. It meshes well with my observations 213929387 years ago when I used to drive in traffic.

sandworm101 6y ago

Or worse yet, they leave so much space that they don't trigger the sensors. That can mess with the traffic management scheme, sometimes preventing a light from ever changing.

kiliantics 6y ago

Putting more people through per stoplight doesn't really change much. You just get more people at the next stop light. The light is by far the limiting factor, not the drivers. That's why polite driving actually helps, because you get less people blocking each other and less mishaps, the things that actually slow everything down.

dmurray 6y ago
You've never been stopped at a light where the queue was many multiples of the number of cars that could get through in one cycle?
- function_seven 6y ago
  Or more infuriating, when you want to make a left turn, but the dedicated lane for that is unreachable until the queue in front of you moves through the intersection. And some inattentive driver ahead misses the light and leaves you with an opening that is exactly 1 foot narrower than your car.
- kiliantics 6y ago
  That still doesn't mean someone leaving a bit of space or a few seconds time between you and the light changes anything. You're still just going on to another stop light afterwards, which is a much larger limiting factor and the de facto limiting factor in traffic design. Too many people misunderstand this, leading to unnecessary aggressive driving. Understanding the basics of traffic mechanics should really be part of the exam in getting your licence.

ninkendo 6y ago

> And then after the car in front starts moving, it'd take them a solid second to start inching forward also. Indeed, the most influential slider in the simulation seems to be the “max acceleration” one... if people accelerate quickly up to their max speed it seems to prevent traffic waves from propagating backwards. It meshes well with my observations 213929387 years ago when I used to drive in traffic.