Shockwave Traffic Jams explained and recreated.

Dont you just hate it when you get stuck in a traffic jam to then find that theres no reason for the jam?

Traffic that grinds to a halt and then restarts for no apparent reason is one of the biggest causes of frustration for drivers. Now a team of Japanese researchers has recreated the phenomenon on a test-track for the first time.

Pinpointing the causes of shockwave jams is an exercise in psychology more than anything else. “If they had set up an experiment with robots driving in a perfect circle, flow breakdown would not have occurred. Human error is needed to cause the fluctuations in behavior,” says Rees. More info

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