[notlefthanded]

Actually it's easier to manage speed and spacing in congestion with a gently curving stretch of road - cars further up are visible so you can anticipate better and slow down earlier/more gradually, reducing jerk. This way too, you won't seem slow to the people behind you. It's not so much going super slow as it is being able to correctly guess the average speed of the road and acting as a damper. This is basically what the article describes btw.

I also like to try and impose a rule of not touching the brakes unless absolutely necessary, and using 20% throttle input at most, that helps with the whole dampening thing.

One last caveat: these techniques only really work for freeways/highways in the developed world. The tragedy of the commons phenomenon is on a whole nother level in places like India or China (se asia in general) or a lot of Latin America or even sixth avenue.

[0xfeba]

> I also like to try and impose a rule of not touching the brakes unless absolutely necessary, and using 20% throttle input at most, that helps with the whole dampening thing.

I do the same. It's funny the frustration this seems to cause other people. Frustration from nothing, if they'd think about it.

[seanp2k2]

"But I want to go fasterrrr! Why doesn't he goooooooo?!?!?" One time, a man and a lady in a Harley Davidson edition F150 got so mad at my for doing this that they were both screaming at me through my open sunroof, threatening to get out and physically assault me etc. They kept yelling at me to "learn how to drive". It as grid-lock traffic and we'd have minutes at a time of complete stoppage. That was a pretty awkward hour of my life.

[0xfeba]

Yeah I've had that a couple times. Once was a honk (I can only assume was) because I wasn't tailgating--yet we were moving at the same speed, so the driver swerved from behind me to the side and then in front--then slammed on their brakes.

The other time was after cruising during a lot of short stop and go intervals (so it was easy to judge crawling speed, that is to say). I eventually switched to the lane I needed and the guy who was rubberbanding behind me the entire way (pretty much going 1-10-1mph constantly instead of just sitting at 3 like me) pulled next to me and shook his head. I had a good feeling why, so I rolled down my window as we came to a stop next to each other at a light and asked if there was a problem. He said, "You drive like a dumb ass". "Oh, I do? Please tell me what I was doing wrong so I can improve". "You just drive like a dumbass". "No really, you seem like you know a lot about driving, please enlighten me". And he rolled up his window, the light turned green but he accelerated before the car in front of him had a chance to go (perhaps to get away from me, I'm 6'2" and 250lbs.), and then slammed on his brakes again...

Dunning-Kruger, if you ask me.