Why Do Freeways Come To A Stop? [Infographic]

I think I speak for pretty much everyone when I say that sometimes when you’re on your way home from work, and you’re taking the freeway, you have more than often found yourself in the middle of a fender bender traffic situation.  Not only is it heavily time consuming, but the annoyance about not knowing why traffic suddenly came to a halt when it was so smooth just a few minutes before can be unbearable.  What do you do while you’re waiting for the funnel effect to wear off?  Maybe you call a friend, listen to music or switch the channel on the radio.  Believe it or not, some people actually bust out their tablet and start to surf in the middle of traffic.  Not only is that dangerous, but the stupidity in not knowing that it will cause you to seriously lose your concentration on the road is just mind boggling.

Sooner or later, you will of course find out why traffic suddenly went from smooth to turtle speed.  But before then, you have a million ideas about why it happened.  In many cases, you will find that there is simply no real explanation for it other than that someone was driving dangerously slow.  Our minds are almost certainly always set on the fact that something bad happened further up the road.

You will be surprised about the effect that someone changing lanes can have on traffic.  It doesn’t take much for traffic to come to a complete stop further down the road.  As a matter of fact, a car slightly slowing down from 60 mph to 50 mph can have a huge impact on the car behind it.  Just have a look at this truly informative infographic created by Stephen J. Beard and Rich Exner and you might have a different understanding about why you’re stuck in traffic on your way home from work.  Maybe next time you can just sit back and chill while the driver directly in front of you is starting to increase speed again.

Via: [Infographic Inspiration]