Phantom Traffic Jams

Eddie Wilson from the TRG and 'The One Show' demonstrate the formation of 'Phantom Traffic Jams'.

Footage from the BBC One Show, Series 3.

[hotwaff]

I remember seeing a comedian a long time ago who had a joke that went something like "we're all stuck in traffic because some asshole 3 miles ahead of us tapped his brakes 4 years ago."

[Artem_Petrov_RUS]

Oh, how many times have I seen this. You are stuck in a traffic jam, you see in your navigator its end in a kilometer, you expect to see some terrible accident at the end, but... everyone just suddenly starts driving at normal speed.

[P_a_N_c_A_k_]

I love how this is just in everyone’s recommended 11 years later. See y’all again when this appears In our recommend 3 years later.

[antjanlosen]

You're not stuck in a traffic jam.
You ARE the traffic jam.

[rogerwilco]

I once saw a car get on the highway and cut across three lanes of busy traffic. Everyone had to do an emergency brake behind him and three lanes of traffic were stuck 10 seconds later.

[martins]

And there are ways to reduce phantom jams, after they have been created.
By slowing down and staying in motion as long as possible behind a traffic jam the bad stop and go can be stopped.

[TyDurr]

None of the people in this video are necessarily bad drivers. The test is _designed_ to cause a traffic jam. The primary issue is that they're packed too closely together (again, by design, to demonstrate that tailgating is bad).

Prevent phantom traffic jams. Keep an even distance between the cars in front of and behind you. Brake gently and minimally.

[abrunosON]

Here in Brazil, some areas where its common for people to drive over the speed limit the traffic guys in plain clothes create the phantom jam on weekends and holidays to diminish the collisions.

[dabinbuh]

In the US we added these cool toll lanes that take up half of every other highway and create phantom traffic jams at every merging lane

[kevinkuenn]

I had a place of work where, whenever someone had an anniversary, they would put food out on a circular table, gather everyone together, give a brief speech and then tell us to dig in. No matter how many times they did it, no matter how many times I tried to tell everyone that lines need a beginning and an end, people would still form a closed-loop and then wonder why nobody was moving. It says a lot about the caliber of people I was working with for sure.

[martinschroederglst]

Great to see this in real life and not just in a computer simulation!

[anygirl]

When people see a cop and suddenly everybody slows down

[concerned_citizen]

So glad I found this! Now I can use it as a visual aid when explaining this phenomenon to people.

[ChronicAndIronic]

I love the fact they’re using Vampire Weekend for the background music. Definitely from 2013

[benwhite]

My challenge to myself in heavy traffic is to never touch my brakes. Keep a healthy following distance and release the gas when I see red in front of me. If I do it right, I’ll catch up to the car in front just as they’re starting to accelerate.

[foop]

I watched a video like 10-15 years ago by some dude who claimed he solved this problem. All you gotta do is put a ton of space between you and the car in front of you, and try to maintain a consistent speed by watching the cars further ahead. The space acts as a kind of buffer that halts any waves of stopped cars rippling backwards. You don't necessarily get where you're going any faster, but it's much more engaging than just sitting in traffic, and you make the road better for everyone behind you.

I drive like this now, and I've noticed another added benefit, which is people merging, usually to get off the highway. If it's bumper to bumper, you have to stop to let a car in if they want to merge into your lane, which further halts any traffic behind you. But if you've got a ton of space in front of you, people can merge as they please with little to no impact on you or the cars behind you.

As long as I don't have anywhere to be, I absolutely love driving in traffic. It's way less boring, and it feels like I'm doing a service to everyone around me. I'm also far from the only person who does this, and it can be fun to encounter others. It's funny because if they're behind you, you end up in this almost oasis, where everyone to either side is bumper to bumper, but you've got like 50+ feet of empty road in front of and behind you lol

[calamari]

shout out to the black car on the top right for having a reaction time so slow it causes everything

[okeesmokee]

Back in 1983 - when computers were new, I attended a Civil Engineering seminar and a visiting professor introduced us to a computer model simulator (very rudimentary) on traffic flow. Everything was doing just fine and all the dots were moving at the same speed. He then introduced a car hitting their brakes, and a backup formed and propagated "up stream', showing all the cars had to slow down and even stop. He then stopped a car, that was worse. He then let the cars go at different speeds and that made it even worse. This is cool to see it with real cars and of course, we see it every day.

[jcrazy]

The year is 2024 and nothing has changed

[ImBoundChaos]

how has no one pointed out at 0:31 the dude on the far side literally stopped