As a commuter student who drives at least 50 miles round trip every day, traffic is a huge annoyance to me. So much so that I avoid leaving campus until 7pm or later as often as possible. This infographic explains some of what happens to cause the ridiculous traffic jams of the 55 and 91 freeways.
It makes me extremely frustrated when I study traffic visualizations such as this one, because I realize how easy it would be for our freeways to be so much smoother, if only people weren’t so terrible at merging. Personally I believe merging should be given its own lesson in driving school, and people should fail their drivers test if the in-car tester thinks they’re terrible at merging. It’s a huge problem, and people waste terrible amounts of gas every day sitting in traffic that doesn’t have to be there.
Someday we will solve this problem…until then…please don’t suck at merging. :)
In Norway they have the concept of a "zipper," which is two streams of traffic merging with cars from each stream alternating. There are signs along the highway warning of a need to zipper, and in general, the traffic seems to flow nicely. I don't know if this concept is taught in driving schools.
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