[jerf]

You don't need "selfishness" to create traffic jams. You need only "latency in response"; if you response less than instantaneously to the car in front of you slowing down, and you response less than instantaneously to the car in front of you speeding up (especially if you accelerate even a bit conservatively, let alone late), you very quickly get amplifying waves.

Your post, if we're going to trade snarky political barbs, is a great example of how some people think that some magical form of "regulation" can regulate basic control theory right out of existence. Thinking that any form of regulation could somehow fix this is exactly the same as thinking that they could "fix" gravity. The physics is actually pretty simple at the core, even if the details are complicated. Anywhere you get negative feedback of a certain very, very popular and easy-to-hit form, you get waves. Can't be stopped.

[wlesieutre]

You shouldn't even want to accelerate immediately at the same rate as the car in front of you, unless you're very optimistic about 1) having instant reflexes on the brake pedal even though your foot is currently on the gas pedal, and 2) your car's stopping distance being exactly the same as every other vehicle.

Having a time delay on your acceleration means that your following distance will increase as speed does, which is the safe behavior. I've had plenty of times when I thought "woo, we're accelerating, it's the end of the traffic jam!" and then had to hit the brakes when we came around a turn into more traffic. Traffic might be reduced if we all rode everyone's bumper all time time and accelerated as a single unit, but that doesn't mean we can actually do that without tons of collisions.

[jerf]

"You shouldn't even want to accelerate immediately at the same rate as the car in front of you,... but that doesn't mean we can actually do that without tons of collisions."

That is correct. Therefore, safe driving will actually create traffic waves. It seems unlikely we'd actually want the regulations that would prevent this sort of wave!