Traffic sucks!
On my drive to work this morning, I’m cruising along minding my own business when for no apparent reason, the highway backed down to a crawl. The trip that should have taken me 20 minutes to make somehow stretched out to 35, and all because we as people have no clue how the hell to drive.
Seriously… what’s the deal with this? As far as road conditions go, I was dealing with a high traffic, 6 lane highway with very slight curves in it. What I noticed was that the traffic only backed up near these curves and at the same time we’re talking about a severe drop in speed, usually resulting in pointless stop and go bullshit. What gives? How hard is it for everyone to just drive 60mph like the damned sign says is the limit. I have no problem going to the limit, but why do people insist on slowing down to the point of pissing everyone off just because there are more cars on the road. What is it about the human condition that makes people so stupid in the morning when in reality most of us have to be somewhere at a certain time. Rush hour should be called fucking slow as shit hour… maybe then people will realize how stupid they’ve been for driving so god damned slow and speed up a little bit. I know at least I’ll appreciate it.
Posted: January 30th, 2008 under Eric's ramblings..., X-tra Stuff!.
Comments
Comment from Eric
Time February 4, 2008 at 11:12 pm
I agree with you on the compression waves… Something I might point out about this part of the country however, is our complete lack of public transportation. Other large cities also have traffic issues, but at least in those places you have a choice of waiting in it or getting on a train or a bus. I kind of like the idea of having a choice in the matter, but until the people out here get their heads out of their asses and do something, I guess I’ll be stuck yelling at people in the crowd. Oh well.
Comment from Brian
Time February 3, 2008 at 12:07 pm
The answer to your question is compression waves. Compression waves? Yes, compression waves.
If driver A cuts off driver B, driver B has to respond by tapping his brakes to avoid hitting driver A. This causes a chain reaction of brake tapping behind driver A. If the cars behind driver A are spaced close together (like in rush hour when more cars are on the road), the compression wave becomes more severe as people are forced to hit their brakes that much harder to compensate for less braking distance to the car in front of them. And since all this is taking place in a more dense medium than normal, it’s a very simple thing to cause an entire freeway to come to a dead stop.
So in short, people in general don’t come to a dead stop for no reason. Just like you, they can only react to the driver in front of them, and imperfect human reaction time and instincts cause problems.