The average person spends about five years of their life driving. That's an insanely huge amount of time that could be put into literally anything else, from productive work to watching Game of Thrones. Given this information, it's no wonder that people are trying to cut down on the amount of time spent driving, and one of the biggest annoyances in driving is traffic.
So how can we efficiently solve the problem of traffic?
What causes traffic?
I visited Germany once, and had the great pleasure of riding on one of the most amazing roads ever built: the Autobahn.
The Autobahn is a huge federal highway system in Germany, where some stretches of road have literally no speed limit, allowing most types of vehicles to drive at insanely fast speeds. And it makes sense— a long stretch of road with no speed limit allows for cars to get from one place to another really fast, and gets rid of traffic.
The one thing you can't do, and the most senseless thing to do once on the Autobahn would be to stop. It's nearly impossible to find a circumstance that would warrant stopping. After all, stopping means that you're waiting to go. And due to humans' inability to coordinate well with each other, we can't all go at the same time, meaning we each have to wait for the car in front of us to go.
Traffic at Center Stage
Think about it: you're at an intersection, and the traffic light is red. When it turns green, why can't all cars just start moving at the same time? For lots of reasons that range from cell-phone usage to general miscoordination, it's impossible to get humans to pull this off right. And that's the root of traffic. Intersections with traffic lights means stopping. Stopping means waiting to go, and going means tons of miscoordination and extra waiting.
On a small scale, this means that you, the eleventh car in your lane may have to wait an extra amount of time before passing through the intersection, but on a larger scale this can lead to huge traffic problems and gridlock.
Paranormal Intersections
But traffic doesn't just appear at traffic lights... it can be seen all over highways where the concept is to have high speed limits and no traffic lights. How does this happen?
Think of a driver in a car named Bill, in the middle of a huge highway. Bill sees a text on his phone or is interrupted by something and decides to brake for just one second. And so it starts.
Carl, the driver right behind Bill, is now forced to slow down slightly due to Bill braking in front of him, then goes on. David, right behind Carl, is now forced to slow down even more, before continuing. Eliza, right behind David, now is forced to come to a full stop, before carrying on.
Bill's small act of braking slightly unknowingly created a "ghost" or "phantom" intersection on the highway, forcing cars to stop before continuing. Sometimes when driving, you may go through bumper-to-bumper traffic for 10 minutes, thinking it was due to an accident or some debris, then suddenly come out of the traffic seeing neither. While there was no accident, you just happened to pass through the ghost intersection left by Bill.
What's the solution?
As CGP Grey recommends in his video The Simple Solution to Traffic (which you should totally watch), teaching drivers to keep the same distance between them and the front car, and them and the back car. Equating this distance helps alleviate the effects of phantom intersections and makes driving more painless... except that won't work. And can't work.
While it's a great idea theoretically, there's no ideal world where every human will follow this, and due to our lack of coordination and attention skills, it's impossible to collectively pull this off.
The biggest cause of traffic isn't cars. It isn't even roads. It's us.
Human miscoordination causes traffic. Period.
... But there's a solution, right?
Thankfully, yes. Simply take humans out of the picture, and enter the era of the self-driving car. A car operated by an internal computer connected to an entire network of other cars. Similar to the internet, this network will allow cars to share information and communicate at near-instantaneous speeds and coordinate to a degree of precision the most smartest humans can't pull off. A driverless car won't get distracted by funny internet memes or stop at any time; it'll simply speed through and tirelessly map out your journey accounting for other cars in the road, getting you to your destination at the quickest time ever possible.
Self-driving cars will kill traffic lights, stopping, speed limits, and ultimately, traffic itself.
So truly, the solution to traffic will be and must be the self-driving car.
I hope you enjoyed this post on how to solve traffic :)
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and have a great day!