3 ms·

I intended for “risk” to be short for “safety risk” in the below portion of my original comment: > Taking advantage of the gaps actually increases the road’s t

I intended for “risk” to be short for “safety risk” in the below portion of my original comment: > Taking advantage of the gaps actually increases the road’s throughput, and is a sufficient tradeoff to risk and energy efficiency for almost all drivers worldwide. > the road can handle you must not put more cars into the empty space without all the cars slowing down (which in turn means the road can handle less cars per time) I agree that there is a range where cars weaving in and out causing people to brake unnecessarily causes more congestion, but there is also a point where there is so much congestion that “filling in the gaps” becomes the optimal move, because the road’s capacity has been reached and maintaining large gaps would simply push congestion further back onto other roads.

mullingitover 3y ago
The problem is that there is no filling in of gaps without lane changes that cause the congestion. Everyone is making what they perceive to be the optimal move for them: "I'll just change over to that lane, because there's open space there and this one's going slow," but that individually optimal strategy isn't optimal for the movement of traffic as a group. You don't even need to maintain large gaps - you just need about two seconds of time between you and the car in front of you, and that varies based on the speed of traffic. Everyone going ~30mph with gaps is going to have a lot more throughput than everyone averaging 10mph with short gaps. Of course this is before you get into the increased risk of collisions with smaller gaps. One fender bender is enough to bring everything to a halt, and statistically with enough cars and short enough gaps those are basically guaranteed.
- harkinian 3y ago
  Yeah, try setting your nav from Los Angeles to Irvine or San Diego to Irvine on any given day. Guaranteed 2-3 wrecks, plus some jams that the nav might think are wrecks but are just phantom jams.

mullingitover 3y ago

The problem is that there is no filling in of gaps without lane changes that cause the congestion. Everyone is making what they perceive to be the optimal move for them: "I'll just change over to that lane, because there's open space there and this one's going slow," but that individually optimal strategy isn't optimal for the movement of traffic as a group. You don't even need to maintain large gaps - you just need about two seconds of time between you and the car in front of you, and that varies based on the speed of traffic. Everyone going ~30mph with gaps is going to have a lot more throughput than everyone averaging 10mph with short gaps. Of course this is before you get into the increased risk of collisions with smaller gaps. One fender bender is enough to bring everything to a halt, and statistically with enough cars and short enough gaps those are basically guaranteed.

harkinian 3y ago
Yeah, try setting your nav from Los Angeles to Irvine or San Diego to Irvine on any given day. Guaranteed 2-3 wrecks, plus some jams that the nav might think are wrecks but are just phantom jams.