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by mwexler 18 days ago
I'm a fan of Beaty's work from 1998. Nothing I've seen has been as easy to implement: leaving space in front of each car creates smooth motion.

https://trafficwaves.org/trafexp.html or easier at https://web.archive.org/web/20260114173129/https://trafficwa...

https://web.archive.org/web/20251214172912/http://trafficwav... has some nice visualizations.

MIT got more press when they "rediscovered" this in 2017:

https://people.csail.mit.edu/bkph/Traffic_Flow_Animation

I'm a car fan, so I'd rather reward drivers for optimal behaviors vs broad car-reductions. I'll probably turn out to be on the wrong side, but maybe we'll find a good compromise.

1 comments

This is one of those things which would work beautifully if:

-Everyone's creep speed was the same.

-No one figured it would be more beneficial for them slip into that gap.

The whole idea is to let people slip in the gap. It's the very lack of gaps that causes the whole jam in the first place.
I think something was missed in translation here.

In my region of the world if someone creeps and leaves a wide gap between them and the next vehicle, eventually someone is bound to change lanes to occupy that space out of the perception that it somehow will help them get ahead in traffic.