Have you ever been driving along the highway, and all of the sudden traffic slows for seemingly no reason? You think, maybe someone got in a fender bender or perhaps there’s an obstruction on the road. But pretty soon, traffic clears with no explanation. If you are wondering what could possibly be causing these phantom traffic jams, the answer may surprise you. Fortunately, there is a very simple fix.
As it turns out, tailgating is the main culprit for phantom traffic jams. In a study done at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, researchers showed that following too closely behind the car ahead of you can cause a backup of multiple vehicles.
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How to get rid of phantom traffic jams
If you’re the only person to stop tailgating the car ahead of you, unfortunately, that won’t fix the problem. What we need is for everyone to work together to keep an equal distance between the car behind you and the car ahead of you. Amazingly, this would allow drivers to get to their destination up to twice as quickly. To see how this idea plays out, take a look at the example below.
If everyone altered their driving habits to keep an equal distance between the cars around them, we could reduce travel times across the board as well as lower fuel consumption (from consistently braking and speeding up) and diminish the need for so many road infrastructure changes.
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The future of traffic jams
As mentioned earlier, the only way this will significantly change the on-road experience is if everyone participates. Unfortunately, that is not likely. As it is, there are very few suggestions for solving this problem. The most attainable solution is to equip vehicles with an adaptive cruise control system that monitors both forward and backward distances. We will see how this problem plays out over the next few years. Perhaps we will see big changes in the automotive industry to get rid of phantom traffic jams once and for all.
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