Japanese Researchers Search for Solution to Traffic Jams

Everyone’s been there: Jammed in gridlock on a city or freeway, chasing the bumper in front of you for a few feet before grinding to another halt, wishing you could part the cars in front of you like a glass-and-steel Red Sea.

Now, researchers from several Japanese universities are studying the so-called “shockwave” effect in hopes of learning how to prevent traffic jams. According to The New Scientist, “shockwave” is a concept that has been around for a while and describes the way a single driver slowing down can cause a chain reaction that eventually halts traffic. The researchers were the first to create a full-scale experiment to test the theory.

To do so, they had 22 vehicles drive around a 230-meter one-lane circle, then watched how the drivers reacted. Sure enough, a shockwave eventually mired the circuit in gridlock every time.

The researchers attributed the cause of the shockwave to simple human error. If robots were allowed to control the cars, they could maintain consistent speed and intervals with ease, but unfortunately it turns out we humans are far too … well, human.

We get distracted or nervous and slow down our car, which in turn begins to slow traffic in the rearview mirror. Before you know it, you have a full-scale traffic jam. Isn’t it funny to think that the maddening gridlock that makes you want to blow open a vein might be caused by nothing more than a driver tapping the break to change the CD?

Shockwave Traffic Jam Recreated for First Time (The New Scientist via Slashdot)