Traffic Physics

I was surfing /. the other day and came across this. It's a link about traffic physics.

Here's a quote:

When the car in front of me leaves, I still cannot accelerate instantly, so I will remain stopped for a moment. I must delay leaving for a moment. If I started up instantly, I'd stay too close to the car ahead of me, and that would not be safe. Each departing car must delay in the same way, and this causes the jam to "evaporate" starting from the forward downstream end. It evaporates in a wave which begins at the forward end of the jam, (near the wreck). The wave eats into the jam from right to left, yet new cars are piling onto the back end of the jam.

Ever since I've started commuting, traffic patterns and other traffic phenomena have become of huge interest to me. Part of me wants to figure out why traffic exists and how it comes about. I sit in it two times a day, yet, never really had a full understanding of what was happening or why.

This site is great because it hits on exactly why traffic exists, or more specifically, how jams are created. Too many times, I've sat on Rt 3, or Rt 46 or any other local highway and experienced invisible accidents.

If you commute, you have to read this. Maybe, one day, we'll be able to change the world and educate everyone on how to fix traffic.