The roads have a capacity.
~15 feet per car.

100 feet of road will fit about 6 or 7 cars, bumper to bumper.
Alternatively, 100 cars will require 1500 feet of distance to fit.

If a driver keeps 30 feet in front of him, at all times, even when stopped in traffic, then that takes the total per-car size up to 45 feet.
100 feet of road now fits 2 cars.
100 cars now require 4500 feet of distance to fit.

The greater the distance kept between cars, the bigger the strain on road capacity, and the farther back the traffic jam will stretch.



Traffic jams in massive commuter areas do not exist because people are driving too close.

They exist because the rate of people entering the highway exceeds the rate of people exiting the highway, for a long enough duration that the highway 'runs out of room' to fit the cars.

You can widen the roads to increase capacity, so the traffic jam doesn't go as far back.
You can increase highway speed limits, so that people can attempt to 'evacuate' the highway faster.

(Travel-capacity in terms of cars-per-second of any given section of road, is 'cars-per-second-per-lane x number-of-lanes'. Increasing either factor will improve travel.)

...But you can't eliminate the jam.

The rate of 'highway exit' is determined by the number of exits, and the capacity of the exit roads to absorb traffic from the highway.

When people exit from a highway, they usually go into local traffic, and are met by a light within 100 feet.
Between the lights, and other cars looking for parking spots, pedestrians, etc, local traffic is a dog.

Highway traffic can't diffuse out of the exits fast enough, and the traffic backs up on the exit ramps, and then backs up onto the highway. Once the traffic backs up onto the highway, exiting traffic consumes a lane for queuing, which forms a choke.


Basically, to avoid a jam, the rate of people entering the highway can not exceed the maximum possible rate of people exiting and diffusing into the destination city.

Because 'everyone goes to work at once', and local traffic is not geared to rapidly absorb exiting traffic, the jams are unavoidable.

Driving with a massive space in front, refusing to fill in the gap, only uses up the highway's buffering capacity more quickly.
That leads to the 'complete' jam happening sooner, where traffic is queued all the way from the destination, all down the highway, and onto the feeder roads miles away, blocking local traffic elsewhere.




IMO, if people really care abut stopping traffic jams, they should put a commuter parking lot at every exit at major commuter areas.

When you exit off of the highway, you would immediately wind your way through a parking lot, and at the other end of the lot you would exit into local traffic.

The parking lot acts as a buffer, allowing the highway exit lane to not get backed up, and prevents the queue from building up onto the highway.

That way the traffic on the highway can travel without chokes.

Although, this would just move the "parking lot" occurring on the highway, into a literal parking lot. You'd still be stuck waiting a while, as the rate of people exiting the parking lot into local traffic would still be limited by the rate at which local traffic can absorb the highway traffic.

Basically, to have literally no waiting, the city streets absorbing exiting highway traffic need the same uninterrupted cumulative bandwidth as the highway.

In the end, if you want to fix highway traffic jams, fix city streets.




You can make the argument that keeping more space in front will make people more comfortable with driving faster, and traffic will move faster.
But, that faster moving traffic will merely more quickly arrive at the same clogged exit, and queue with the same other cars waiting to get onto the local roads.

-scheherazade

My guess would be he stuck to zero calorie drinks and avoided fries.

Had a quick on their nutritional website, a Big Mac is 520 calories, which is not great but not absurd. The issue is, you add a large fries (500) and coke (280) to that and you've added exactly 150% more calories on top.

All up being 1300 calories or about 2/3rds of your daily intake in one meal. Provided you avoided the sides though, it wouldn't be too hard to stick within the limits.

The issue is that MCD makes the minimum mandated attempt to educate customers. Australia legislates that food energy levels be published in a prominent fashion alongside the rough recommended daily energy intake of 8700kJ. They usually publish most of these on the side in small font. Having been over in France recently they didn't have them, I'm sure that's the case in most countries.

The larger issue with MCD and other fast food is the use of trans-fats and excessive sodium.

Trans-fats act as an insanely effective preservatives that keeps their produce looking like it'd been cryogenically frozen even years on. They're also have a reputation for clogging arteries causing heart attacks, strokes and the like.

Sodium which boosts blood pressure when ingested is a flavour enhancer which is probably why it's used in excessive amounts (e.g. a Big Mac has 40% of recommended daily Sodium). Even if this guy kept within calorie limits he would have easily been breaching recommended Sodium levels and in the long term would be elevating his risk of high blood pressure, stroke or various kidney diseases.

Fantastic. I think i see little dust devils being whipped up which is interesting just because everything is so still before the engine stirs the dust. I love how much control there was searching for a flat area. Liveleak says they stopped to survey the area.

I was just commenting the other day how in a way it's great to see things like Russia speaking out for restraint with Iran, and now China doing something very impressive on the moon. I think with fingers crossed the forward thinking people of the earth have decided against "world wars" and mass destruction (no capitals, i'm not using the word in the style of Bush Jr).

Wouldn't it be great if the "competition" came from a purely technological space race with Russia, China and US/Europe involved? Just as long as we on this side can get past the whole psychopathic-capitalism problem.

It is my opinion that those mysterious money men who seem to have influence over scary media companies are metaphorically assembling people into a human pyramid, all shitting on those below us. The ones nearer the top and clambering their way up are happy enough not to have to be hit by that much shit whilst those at the bottom are drowning in it. The pyramid is so clogged up with shit that it's forming a sea of it and the people at the bottom are happy if they can manage to tread-shit for another week, the people at the top are now so high up they can't see it happening yet but eventually we're all going to drown in shit! Here's to a Merry Christmas, folks.

*kill the video due to offending the big guys.
hey all, I understand your rational related to personal videos, which can lead to publicity stunts and perhaps other useless videos clogging the sift. But perhaps you're missing the value behind enforcing this rule. or maybe I'm missing it. In any case, I'll be back into my leech mode and be out of your way.

The reason this happened was that there was a push by one or more sifters to vote up blankfists pqed videos so he could gain enough star points to go galaxy. It does however tend to clog up the "newness" pages with all his currently sifted videos, and I assume is why this sift talk post was made. It's not the first time it's ever happened and i'm sure it wont be the last. All i know is I can't wait to hear the song dag has made for blankfist.

I was more impressed by how far those Impalas jump. Also in all the nature videos i watch you never see paved roads with lines of cars and people clogging them up. Reality can be disappointing.

This is like comfort food. Like fried chicken... it clogs your arteries and kills you but takes you back to grandma cooking dinner in Georgia in the 1970s. This stuff was what was playing when I got my first car, was mobile for the first time, out of school for the first time, freedom. So I associate a powerful good with all this stuff. Tripe.... yes.... but good times around it. In my own car, would have been YES, Pink Floyd and Rush around this time.

Combine that ubiquitous police and security presence with non-stop news babble of threats, terror, alerts, security, etc., add a dash of endless reports of carnage, death, violence, TSA pat down, etc. etc. etc.....And you have a recipe for a delusional frightened public eager for safety and security at the cost of their humanity, civil and constitutional rights, their will.

Dumb-ass should have left the fucking building and simply never paid the ticket. If he waited until he was pulled over again, chances are good he'd not be taken to jail for a simple FTA over a damn traffic citation-Sometimes the best way to fight the system is to ignore it.

I have traffic warrants out of a couple of precincts where I am, have for years-I have been pulled over several times and have only been told to "take care of those as soon as possible."

It helps to live in a city whose county jail is constantly overcrowded-Oh, and the last time I spent the night in jail, I had about $3000 in fines from old tickets that miraculously melted away after 24 hours. I will NEVER pay a local municipality again for a traffic ticket.

On another cheery note, I would like to thank the cornucopia of neighbor's to the south representing a few countries who come here illegally and clog the county court system ensuring no room for non-violent offenders like myself. The broken system works for me, works real well.

My first motorcycle (750 Magna), got it while living in California. When I found out it was legal to split lanes there I didn't feel so bad for having done it already. The motorists in California, I noticed quickly after having been driving in Texas for 23 years prior, are much more aware of, and courteous to cyclists.

Still, the douche-factor remains, had a few times where assholes pretended to open their doors or shout shit at you as you navigate a traffic clog-On some days, they'd get their instant karma in the form of, well, equally civil payback.

Unions would not come into existence if it was not for wasting time and resources because that is what companies care about. Clogging up the airport with opt outs is a valid form of protest and could be effective if many people got on board.

I would love to be a optimist like you and believe government follows facts and studies and just calling a congress person would solve the problem but realistically that does not happen. I could give you examples of this if you want but I believe this fact is obvious enough for it to stand on its own.

I am Canadian and I have met many Members of Parliament over an issue I cared about as well as protested over the same issue. A multipronged approach is best and I believe when it comes to the TSA it would help to clog the system with opt-outs till it breaks.

If lucky goes with this idea, which I think is fine (please please, no drop down menu where you have to choose to go to the promoted vids, that would be a killer).... since there would be a rotation, could the promote time be much longer?

Since they won't be clogging up the front page.... and they won't be on the front page at any given moment.... having a longer promote time would be good, yeah?

And doublepromote has meaning again?

@lucky760 proposal sounds like it would be better then what we have now but still not as good as what we had before. Id rather have my videos sitting anywhere on the front page rather then in the proposed promoted section. I also still think * quality will be a far better choice for videos and will end up clogging the front page, and for much longer then promotes ever did. So new content still gets pushed down but for a far longer time. Of course it's just my opinion.

I'm not sure where to begin so ill just start rambling. I find the promotes to be an ineffective way of showcasing a video. My eye tends to skip over the line of promoted videos as all im seeing is 3 thumbnails. The titles have been made ineffective by how small they are,and the descriptions are nonexistent. I actually skip over them to the videos with large appealing titles. Ive had two videos promoted so far and noticed they received only a couple votes when they were promoted and took off (received votes)when they dropped off the promote line and onto the front page.

You may think promotes at times clogged up the front page but when sifters realize that its way more effective(and imo it is way more effective) now to * quality a video, putting it on the front page for so much longer then a promote ever did, it will surely clog up the front page with * quality videos. I personally will be qualitying videos where i use to promote them.

That is all for now