Stop braking for no reason!
According to over 1,300 comments from a July 30th WFAA Facebook post asking about the MOST annoying habit of DFW drivers we have compiled a list of the top 10 most mentioned. There might be nothing in DFW that gets us as fired up as traffic: The slow drivers, the fast drivers, the endless construction cones, the bumper-to-bumper backups on I-35, I-75, LBJ and the Tollways.
No. 9: Braking for no reason!
You’ve seen that driver. Maybe you ARE that driver (no offense). A simple change of a lane on I-35 results in a near stopdown in the middle of rush hour traffic. Or, just the simple task of making a right hand turn requires a complete stop in the middle of a crowded roadway before doing so.
There’s also the classic over-braker, who can spot any upcoming road obstruction from a mile away and come to a halt accordingly.
If you’ve done even a small amount of highway driving, you’ve probably experienced this: You’re moving along at a pretty good clip when all of a sudden traffic slows to a crawl. You inch along for a while, and then just as suddenly, the traffic starts moving again. There’s no accident. There’s no one speed-trapping, and you’re puzzled. What’s going on? A typical case would be someone slams on the brakes just for a short moment. The car behind them is forced to slam on the brakes and so on back upstream. It’s like a wave flowing backwards. People who study this talk about chaotic systems and positive feedback, but the practical consequences are that the amount drivers have to slow down increases the further back you are from the original incident.
Now, onto a way to smooth out that wave and keep traffic flowing…. This method involves not only keeping track of the car in front of you but the car behind you, as well. It may seem counterintuitive, this can prevent these phantom tie-ups. The easiest way to think about it at first is you’re trying to maintain a distance halfway between the car ahead and the car behind. Theoretically, doing this will smooth out the traffic. Now to make the scheme really work, you need cars that can do the forward and backward monitoring on their own and make the necessary adjustments automatically.
© 2018 WFAA
Published on 2018-08-21 16:38:56
