MIT study on how to reduce traffic jams

[enchanted]

Drive consciously

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lauriewinkless/2017/12/15/if-we-all-stopped-tailgating-we-could-dramatically-cut-traffic-jams/

[Joshe]

Plus traffic accidents and fatalities. It’s like the most obvious thing, yet people insist on following 1 or 2 car lengths apart at 60+ mph. 

[enchanted]

7 hours ago, Joshe said:

Plus traffic accidents and fatalities. It’s like the most obvious thing, yet people insist on following 1 or 2 car lengths apart at 60+ mph. 

It's unconscious behavior. 

[r0ckyreed]

It’s not that simple. If I leave more room, then some asswipe is gonna switch into my lane. I’ve seen it happen many times. But when I tailgate, they can’t lane change right in front of me.

[enchanted]

13 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

It’s not that simple. If I leave more room, then some asswipe is gonna switch into my lane. I’ve seen it happen many times. But when I tailgate, they can’t lane change right in front of me.

You have to sacrifice one or two car spaces for the greater good. 

Edited August 10 by enchanted

[Sandroew]

This is genius! And of course Toyota picks up the idea first. Best car manufacturing company imo.

[sholomar]

It's hard to make turns onto major arteries when all cars are evenly spaced apart. Bottom line, you're not going to change human nature anyways. As long as people have conscious control of their vehicles, trying to moral shame them with should statements will have no effect. Their genetic drives will take over their driving behavior. Plus traffic is way too congested in many areas to expect perfectly spaced driving. Best to practice radical acceptance on this matter.

[thedoorsareopen]

If stage orange tailgates as a matter of course, and stage green leaves ample space but gets cut off, what does stage yellow do?

[Sandroew]

@sholomar I disagree. You dont have to change human nature to do this, you just have to change a specific human behavior. And we change all the time, i mean if we didn't we would still be living "in caves", no ? And the potential benefits here are HUGE. I mean the article talks about cutting travel time in HALF. Thats an unbelievable amount of time and money saved. Not just for the individual, but the government too. The government would be dumb not to promote stuff like this.

[enchanted]

On 17/08/2025 at 4:16 PM, Sandroew said:

@sholomar I disagree. You dont have to change human nature to do this, you just have to change a specific human behavior. And we change all the time, i mean if we didn't we would still be living "in caves", no ? And the potential benefits here are HUGE. I mean the article talks about cutting travel time in HALF. Thats an unbelievable amount of time and money saved. Not just for the individual, but the government too. The government would be dumb not to promote stuff like this.

Exactly, we have "don't drink and drive" awareness everywhere. We could do the same with tailgating. 

[meta_male]

So what if you got a grandma going 50 in a 120 zone? Everyone just slows down?

Tailgating isn’t the real issue. The issue is most people can’t drive for shit. Driving is dangerous. We don’t need more rules or around following distance, we need better drivers. Flooding traffic with unskilled drivers just makes it worse for everyone.

On 16.8.2025 at 0:27 PM, thedoorsareopen said:

If stage orange tailgates as a matter of course, and stage green leaves ample space but gets cut off, what does stage yellow do?

Stage yellow chooses the higher order solution and filters through on a motorcycle 

[enchanted]

17 hours ago, meta_male said:

So what if you got a grandma going 50 in a 120 zone? Everyone just slows down?

Tailgating isn’t the real issue. The issue is most people can’t drive for shit. Driving is dangerous. We don’t need more rules or around following distance, we need better drivers. Flooding traffic with unskilled drivers just makes it worse for everyone.

Stage yellow chooses the higher order solution and filters through on a motorcycle 

Leaving space is a characteristic of good driving 

[Joshe]

3 hours ago, enchanted said:

Leaving space is a characteristic of good driving 

It’s characteristic of intelligence. Lest you wind up shitting in a colostomy bag. 

[meta_male]

6 hours ago, enchanted said:

Leaving space is a characteristic of good driving 

Leaving space doesn’t make you a good driver, it makes you a safe driver. Look at racecar drivers, the leave zero space. 

If everyone was actually competent behind the wheel, space wouldn’t even be a discussion. But because most people are half-asleep we gotta come up with rules like "leave 2 seconds" to cover for theri lack of skill.

So we could raise driving skills...or slow everything down so grandma can keep up.

[enchanted]

10 hours ago, meta_male said:

Leaving space doesn’t make you a good driver, it makes you a safe driver. Look at racecar drivers, the leave zero space. 

If everyone was actually competent behind the wheel, space wouldn’t even be a discussion. But because most people are half-asleep we gotta come up with rules like "leave 2 seconds" to cover for theri lack of skill.

So we could raise driving skills...or slow everything down so grandma can keep up.

And how would you make everyone competent behind the wheel? 

Edited August 21 by enchanted

[meta_male]

@enchanted You don’t. Most people suck at driving, always will. The only real fix is stricter licensing and ongoing training. But there would be serious backlash by poor drivers so it will never happen. Natural selection is doing its job for now.

[Sandroew]

In my understanding the paper goes about a fundamental change in how we drive that would be most probably also be represented in traffick law changes. And of course we can change how we are doing things as a society. Yes there’ll be people that suck, but that doesn’t mean you don’t upgrade shit. 200 years from now the people are going to look back at us and they will be amazed how stupid and inefficient we were.

[enchanted]

On 22/08/2025 at 3:52 AM, meta_male said:

@enchanted You don’t. Most people suck at driving, always will. The only real fix is stricter licensing and ongoing training. But there would be serious backlash by poor drivers so it will never happen. Natural selection is doing its job for now.

Yes so we could train them to not tail gate

Edited August 25 by enchanted

[enchanted]

8 hours ago, Sandroew said:

In my understanding the paper goes about a fundamental change in how we drive that would be most probably also be represented in traffick law changes. And of course we can change how we are doing things as a society. Yes there’ll be people that suck, but that doesn’t mean you don’t upgrade shit. 200 years from now the people are going to look back at us and they will be amazed how stupid and inefficient we were.

Yes we change all the time. Getting people to  smoke less in the past couple decades is a good example. Same could be done with tailgating

[meta_male]

7 hours ago, enchanted said:

Yes so we could train them to not tail gate

Misses the point. If someone’s going slow in the fast lane they shouldn’t even be there. I’ll tailgate until they move, it’s called traffic flow.

Safe driving isn’t just keeping distance, it’s knowing where you belong on the road. How to train that into people's heads?