Traffic literacy

Kinja'd!!! "Chairman Kaga" (mike-mckinnon)
03/26/2015 at 11:02 • Filed to: None

Kinja'd!!!7 Kinja'd!!! 8

Most drivers are morons.

If people would pay attention to their daily drive, they'd quickly learn where the bottlenecks are and how to avoid them. It just blows my mind that folks can be so oblivious to the notion that if they move over here and now, even if it's slower moving at this moment, in 500 feet it'll pick up, while the lane they're in will come to a stop because of merging traffic.

This morning some joker in a Caravan with New York plates barreled past me on the shoulder, forced his way into traffic well past the merge, intimidated another driver into letting him merge into another lane before it was legal, cut back and forth across lanes, all of which were bumper to bumper and stop and go. Meanwhile I took my time, merged when I was supposed to, picked the lane I knew moved the fastest, and by the time I got to my exit I'd lost sight of him... behind me.


DISCUSSION (8)


Kinja'd!!! ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable) > Chairman Kaga
03/26/2015 at 11:10

Kinja'd!!!0

People are idiots. Obtaining a license to drive is far too easy in this country, as is getting keys to a vehicle and driving without Government endorsement.

Instead of fixing the real problem; a lack of personal responsibility for your time behind the wheel, the PTB would much rather just mandate more technology to "save us from ourselves."

Fuck everything.


Kinja'd!!! Party-vi > Chairman Kaga
03/26/2015 at 11:13

Kinja'd!!!0

I make a lot of my driving decisions just like you described above - I know where the slow pockets are and how to avoid them.


Kinja'd!!! ACESandEIGHTS > Chairman Kaga
03/26/2015 at 11:17

Kinja'd!!!0

Def gotta look at the big picture: engineers know how much volume a particular segment of highway can potentially move. Throw in anomalies and it tanks throughput. Hopefully that can make you feel better about the situation because it's true: there's nothing you nor anyone else can do to remedy congestion and unforeseen events. Traffic runs, then it sees a cliff, then it falls off to nothing, almost instantly and everything stops with a puff of dust. Like a Roadrunner cartoon.

See: Wile E. Coyote Effect, Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Sec. 1.1.2.


Kinja'd!!! Brian, The Life of > Chairman Kaga
03/26/2015 at 11:19

Kinja'd!!!1

SHUT YOUR MOUTH!

If you tell everyone there will be no more quick paths through the bottlenecks. C'mon, Kaga ... THINK!


Kinja'd!!! Stapleface-Now Hyphenated! > Chairman Kaga
03/26/2015 at 11:41

Kinja'd!!!0

The problem is, this would need forethought and common sense. Which we all know isn't all that common.

One of my BIGGEST pet peeves is people who can't get the concept of Yielding. The sign says yield, not surrender. If you wait at the foot of an on-ramp for traffic to clear you'll be there forever. Get up to speed and merge appropriately. Unfortunately even that doesn't always work. There's an on ramp on my commute every day that has maybe a 20 foot lane before it just ends with no shoulder.

I would love to avoid all the congested spots on my commute. But seeing as how there's no other way to get across the Delaware river than by bridge, I'm screwed by everyone else. Not to mention once (if?) the weather turns the asshole shore traffic.

/rant. Now I feel better.


Kinja'd!!! Chairman Kaga > Stapleface-Now Hyphenated!
03/26/2015 at 12:21

Kinja'd!!!0

Texas' genius solution is to simply reduce the number of entry/exit ramps to one every few miles. So what happens is traffic flows smoothly for a bit, then back up to infinity and beyond when the 20,000 cars that have been toodling down the frontage road waiting to get on the interstate all merge at once.

And look at this bewilderingly awesome traffic design. https://www.google.com/maps/search/ma…

Doesn't look that bad, right? Except the flyover from 290 onto Mopac/Loop1 dumps you out about 100 feet before the frontage road's ramp onto MoPac, which is about 200 feet before the exit ramp for William Cannon (a VERY busy east/west road), and also the ending of the left-most lane on MoPac. From 4 pm until about 7 pm, this stretch of road is the most congested in the state. It's insane. Traffic will back up for a solid half mile for the flyover ramp from 290 to MoPac. I HATE the traffic here. Between the morons in the cars and the morons desiging the system...


Kinja'd!!! Stapleface-Now Hyphenated! > Chairman Kaga
03/26/2015 at 12:33

Kinja'd!!!0

Wow, that's pretty damn stupid. I would think with all the space that Texas has there really wouldn't be much traffic congestion. Obviously I was mistaken.

My daily commute is undergoing a 1.3 BILLION dollar, 7 year construction project to try and ease traffic congestion. The work is being done in phases, which makes sense. Problem is, every phase the state is submitting bids for. And the same company isn't winning all the bids. So we're expecting different companies to read the same plans the same way. I fully expect this thing to be totally screwed up for years to come. Estimate completion date isn't until 2021.

This is at the foot of the Walt Whitman Bridge on the NJ/PA Border, on the NJ side. What fun it is to drive this every day.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Nor…


Kinja'd!!! Fred von Halem > Stapleface-Now Hyphenated!
03/26/2015 at 14:21

Kinja'd!!!0

I almost rear ended someone who stopped on an on ramp a few months ago because they stopped at the exact moment that I was checking my blind spot and getting ready to stomp on the gas. There was no traffic and they had been driving normally up to that point. The last thing I expected was for them to come to a complete stop on the fucking on ramp to let one random car on the highway cruise by. Had I hit the person it would have been my fault too! They were driving a red, 4 door, e46... BMW owners, amirite?