Curing lane-merge traffic jams

It amazes me what a waste the channel 10 traffic helicopter is. It gives detailed traffic reports to people who are in front of a TV... which doesn't help any of the cars actually stuck in traffic. This isn't news at all... what they should do is show us how to speed things up and luckily we have a computer modelled solution for you:

A computer geek works out a great way to solve those stopped or slow lanes in rush hour traffic. He stumbled upon this by accident when he was driving into a city in rush hour and found that leaving a large gap in front of himself actually helped traffic speed up behind him and clear the congestion in front. Read more on this fascinating subject that affects us all at amasci.com but below is a neat animation and some great tips:

MERGING-LANE TRAFFIC JAMS...

A SIMPLE CURE

ON THE LEFT: normal drivers who close up the gaps whenever the traffic slows down or comes to a stop. Nobody can merge except at the end of the jam... traffic travels very slowly

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ON THE RIGHT:Drivers behaving unusually... they encourage others to merge ahead of them and they leave large spaces ahead of themselves EVEN if traffis slows to a crawl. merging is easier and they travel much faster.

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Traffic jams on highways are often triggered where two lanes must merge into one. Lanes of cars cannot merge if there are no large gaps between cars. Therefore, drivers who create large gaps between cars will ease this type
of traffic jam.

To CURE this type of jam:

• Maintain a large space ahead of your car.
  
• Encourage one, two even three cars to merge ahead of you.
  
• If traffic slows to a complete stop, KEEP TWO CAR-LENGTHS OF SPACE OPEN AHEAD OF YOU.
  
• Never "punish" merging drivers by closing your gap.
  
• Other suggestions
  
  

Amazingly enough, it is not necessary that EVERYONE do this. If only a
few drivers will maintain large gaps during heavy traffic, then merging
traffic is not forbidden, and the situation in the left-hand diagram can
be prevented.