pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

I don't do a lot of motorway driving but I drove down to Kent from Liverpool the other week and was stuck in quite a few queues.

Now my three questions are !

1. Why do the signs pop up with limited speed like 40mph for a few miles... slow traffic down and then go back up to national, when there seems to be no reason at all for it ? No road works, no crashes.. nothing ??

2. Why are there lanes blocked by cones for a few miles but no sign of workmen or even work... we just lose a land and then get it back after waiting in a pointless line.

3. Where the **** do the queues come from on the motorway when there are no road works, no accidents... ?? You come upon slow moving traffic which after 5 minutes goes from stand still to 70 again... WTF ?? it then acts as a wave back a long the motorway !!!????!!!??

boxst

1: This is to slow traffic down so that they do not form queues later on. The 'variable speed limit'.

2: Stupidity.

3: There are lots of studies kicking around about this. It can be as simple as someone slamming on their brakes, which means that everyone behind puts their brakes on and this area becomes 'slow' and will ripple back for several miles.

Steve

PeteBrant

To ease congestion - If you limit the number of vehicles hitting a known congestion area, you will by defaulty ease that congestion - If everyone is doing 70 odd, more cars get there, more qickly, hence congestion builds.
Dunno - I assume that cones are put in place sometime before work starts.
[/quote]
Sheer volume of traffic. It is eased by using variable speed limits.

davegtt

Usually tw@ts driving too close to the car infront, someone taps the brakes, after reaction times the guy behind slams his on and before you know it you end up with traffic stopping. the longer its stopped for on a busy road the bigger the tailback.

Pretty simple really, could all be avoided with decent drivers.

Spoon

So true!!

I had a bloke pull out on me, I was doing 80mph and he pulled out to overtake at 64mph. We travelled like that for only a matter of 30 seconds but it could have been less if he'd bothered to pull back in after his manoeuvre. I was forced to nudge him back in.

The car I had been behind before Mr 'Unaware of progression' pulled out was way in the distance and I had a stream of cars behind me when it was previously clear.

matchmaker

Or there's Mr/Mrs 60 mph who sits in the outside lane for miles at that speed overtaking slightly slower traffic, without thinking about pulling in to let those of us who want to go faster past

serega

There are also people sitting in the middle lanes when there is noone in the left hand lane for miles, so everyone starts to overtake them on the right, so in essence it becomes a dual carriageway and because the traffic is usually of much greater quantity than on dual carriageways we get ques.
There are also lorries that seem to be very keep to overtake each other which takes them hours - but its obviously very important for them to go 1mph faster, they never think that because of it there are countless ques behind them.

I was also once behind this people carrier in the right hand lane who was overtaking noone for around 3-5 mins doing around 60mph, when i flashed him he just stomped on his brakes - good thing my brakes were much better than his and there wasnt anyone directly behind me.

So to sum it up - the world is full different people, and it seems that not everyone has common sense and not everyone is completely sane - but mostly everyone is allowed to drive, hence if someone is an inconsiderate idiot or a retard, all others get to suffer.

KiwiGTI

Application of Queueing Theory - Traffic on a road