What about the car behind that one? What about the 10, 20, 30 cars behind them?
If we assume an arbitrary 2 second gap between vehicles (and two seconds might be a bit large at 80km/h, but let's pick a number), that 10th vehicle has 20 seconds of gap on the hard braker. It will be less because of reacting to the situation ahead of them, but fundamentally they are running 20 seconds behind the situation.
If everyone worked to slow slightly and re-establish their forward gap when cars merge in front of them, traffic would continue flowing with almost no loss of average speed, though.
I agree with the premise, but lets be honest- too many male drivers (some women i guess) have way too much pride to allow for enough space for people to join the lane in front of them... Ive never understood the idiots that freak out when someone lawfully and appropriately changes lanes in front of them.
Last edited by Flabbibulin; 12-13-2011 at 10:58 AM.
Lets be honest though- too many male drivers (some women i guess) have way too much pride to allow for enough space for people to join the lane in front of them... Ive never understood the idiots that freak out when someone lawfully and appropriately changes lanes.
This is regards to the comment that you shouldn't leave space because that would cause delays:
It's a vicious cycle. No one leaves enough room so people are forced to "steal" your two second gap. If everyone left more space, lane changes could occur as needed rather than looking for the weak link and forcing your way in.
My theory is that if everyone left a gap traffic would move quick like a centipede but with tailgating the calgary commute moves slow like an inchworm. An example is southland merging onto southbound deerfoot. Everyone tries to merge when traffic is going 10 km per hour when the andreson/deerfoot split doesn't happen for a km. I stay in my lane until traffic is up to speed and lane changing is quite simple. That is a huge reason why Deerfoot south is backed up from southland to the airport.
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This is regards to the comment that you shouldn't leave space because that would cause delays:
It's a vicious cycle. No one leaves enough room so people are forced to "steal" your two second gap. If everyone left more space, lane changes could occur as needed rather than looking for the weak link and forcing your way in.
My theory is that if everyone left a gap traffic would move quick like a centipede but with tailgating the calgary commute moves slow like an inchworm. An example is southland merging onto southbound deerfoot. Everyone tries to merge when traffic is going 10 km per hour when the andreson/deerfoot split doesn't happen for a km. I stay in my lane until traffic is up to speed and lane changing is quite simple. That is a huge reason why Deerfoot south is backed up from southland to the airport.
I completely agree with this, I think that the deerfoot is unbearable for two reasons at rush hour traffic.
One is the above, people will accelerate to close gaps and then stand on their brakes when they get to close and it causes a chain reaction.
two are the idiots that suddenly panic that they're in the far left lane when they suddenly realize that their turnoff is a carlength ahead and they frantically signal once and try to move across the deer foot cutting everyone off and slowing everyone down.
Frankly the drivers in this town are terrible and in my next life I'm opening a brake shop within spitting distance of the deerfoot
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Didn't read the whole thread so hopefully I don't repeat too much, and I also hope I don't come across as a dick, but there is 0% chance of any liability being placed on that police car, either from an insurance company or from a court of law, if something were to somehow ever get that far. The bottom line is the drivers who r/e the vehicles in front of them were following too close. In this case it happened to be a cop pulling a u-turn that caused the accident, but it just as easily could have been a car slamming on the brakes to stop for a dog on the road (or 12,000 other similar scenarios) that caused the same accident. Reality is there are numerous situations which require rapid and immediate braking, every driver has to be conscience of that and understand the distance they need to leave in order to prevent getting into a situation such as the one described in OP.
The cop was fully within his rights to do what he did, if he needs to make a u-turn he can do so, the law doesn't apply to him (when responding to a call) like it does for the rest of us. The only way the cop would have been somehow liable in this situation is if in making his u-turn he impacted a vehicle coming the opposite direction, the fact that cars behind him (and the fact the first guy was able to stop in time and not hit the cop is very telling, that alone tells me the others were following too close, and given the extent of the impact reported, way too close) were unable to stop after he applied his brakes is not even close to being something he could (or would) be held liable for.
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If by rush hour you mean smooth, consistent, at speed traffic flow, yes it would last all day. Lack of space between vehicles is the number one cause of traffic issues during rush hour. There are only about six billion studies and simulations on this topic.
Seriously, we need to just computerize all cars. Problem solved.
I think a problem is too many exits and on-ramps within a relatively short distance on all of the major stretches of road. Each of.these is a point where there is a high probability of lane changing and cause of a slow down when people try to avoid the oncoming traffic from one on-ramp and then change back to get to their exit. It's convenient when it isn't rush hour, but each of those points just compounds the congestion problems.
Sucks that everyone was involved in the collision. But to be fair, people tailgate on that road like there's no tomorrow. Don't follow so close behind people and you're less likely to be involved. I wasn't there to witness and I may very well be wrong, but the way people drive on that road RGMG.
Did anyone else scroll through the thread quick, looking for mikey's username, not see anything and assume there was nothing good to read in here? I expected him to turn this into another cop-bashing extravaganza!
two are the idiots that suddenly panic that they're in the far left lane when they suddenly realize that their turnoff is a carlength ahead and they frantically signal once and try to move across the deer foot cutting everyone off and slowing everyone down.
Frankly the drivers in this town are terrible and in my next life I'm opening a brake shop within spitting distance of the deerfoot
This is probably why southbound Deerfoot at Glenmore always seem so bad at "rush hour"(s) It's always so backed up getting there but when you finally do reach that stretch of road you never see any kind of accident that you expect to be causing the gongshow.
This is probably why southbound Deerfoot at Glenmore always seem so bad at "rush hour"(s) It's always so backed up getting there but when you finally do reach that stretch of road you never see any kind of accident that you expect to be causing the gongshow.
I think three lanes reducing to two lanes has something to do with it as well. I think that's the biggest reason for slow downs on Deerfoot. It happens at a bunch of places and causes stupid braking because people didn't get into the correct lane in time, not to mention the congestion of three lanes worth of cars merging into two.
