He didn't just make a mistake, he made a lot of mistakes. He was driving without insurance, driving with a suspended license, using an on ramp as an exit ramp...

Knowing this, instead of keeping a low profile like a sane person and just driving on, he decided he just had to get off his bike and wander over to the cameraman way down the street to chew them out like the scumbag that he is.

As the reporter said in the video, if he had just kept his helmet on and drove off, he would have been fine. He brought this on himself.

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

News link: http://www.txcn.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/tv/stories/wfaa090629_wz_constablechase.1bc95a22.html

GARLAND — A pursuit that lasted 90 minutes and stretched through at least three cities ended with a violent collision at a Garland intersection Monday afternoon.

The chase began in Mesquite following a traffic stop by Dallas County Constables. It was not immediately clear what triggered the decision to pursue the driver, but there were indications that the man was wanted on felony warrants.

The Nissan's sedan eluded a phalanx of squad cars at speeds up to 100 mph on a back-and-forth route that included Interstate 30, LBJ Freeway and local streets. The suspect has been named as Shane Michel.

At one point, the he skidded out of control on a highway exit ramp and struck a highway sign head-on. The sign flipped over the car and shattered the car's rear window, but the driver kept going across a grassy median and resumed his flight.

Later, the car crashed through lowered gates at a DART light rail crossing in Garland.

A Dallas police helicopter and at least eight squad cars from several agencies were involved in the pursuit, which ended abruptly at the corner of Plano Road and Buckingham Road in Garland when Michel pulled in front of a pickup truck.

His sedan was struck on the driver's side door and skidded to a stop about half a block away. Paramedics used equipment to extricate him from the wreckage. He survived, but was injured. His condition at present is critical.

The driver of the pickup truck did not appear to be seriously hurt.

I was driving a truck onto a highway exit ramp, listening to Bob and Tom when the first one hit. My grandfather knew the guys in the bomber that hit the Empire State Building in 1946, so I had heard that story before and thought "accident". When I had made it 4 exits down I head the second plane had hit I switched to the news channel and spent the rest of the day wondering about my uncle at the Pentagon (who was out and about that day and wasn't inside, although the plane didn't hit his office anyway) and generally continuing to do my job.

As for Westy's smart assed comments: I assume you are NOT in America, so you are welcome if we kept you from speaking another tounge than your own native one. If you are from one of the countries we blew the crap out of over the years: get over it.