Welcome to Roadscapes Wednesday, each week this post will talk about roads and infrastructure related topics. I am called the “road geek” for a good reason, I love roads and love talking about roads!
Have you ever wondered what causes traffic? Indeed, what or who is responsible for the most time-consuming traffic jams? Is it human error? Poor city planning? Accidents?
According to experts, the most significant contributor to extreme traffic is poor decision-making by humans. At first glance, this may seem a bit upsetting but it’s rather good news. If humans are causing traffic, then they may also be the solution to traffic.
Currently, engineers are hard at work looking for a solution to traffic jams. But to find one, they must first understand the root cause of the problem: human-caused traffic.
These human-caused traffic problems are known as “phantom traffic jams.” They all start when a driver in traffic makes a poor decision that causes a ripple effect affecting all cars on the road. Ultimately, this ripple effect leads to cars far enough behind the faulty driver coming to a complete stop.
This is why it is thought that autonomous cars may very well stop our traffic woes. These types of vehicles will not be prone to human errors and may well fix our traffic issues once and for all.
What other solutions do experts propose? Well, alternative travel solutions have been touted as one way of keeping too many cars off the road.
Can these provide the solutions we have been waiting so anxiously to receive? The folks from Interesting Engineering answer these questions and more in their video.
Categories: Roadscapes Stuff
