Interstate traffic. Highways are so full of traffic lights and sharp turns so I get that. But how does traffic work on an interstate? Every turn is designed so you don’t have to stop. Every merge is seamless.
Yet SOMEHOW every road-trip runs into the whole thing being in a complete standstill. How does that work? What does the front of that look like? What’s happening?
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People get uncomfortable driving fast when they’re very close to other cars. That makes sense, because you have a lot less time to react to problems if other cars are close to you.
So they slow down. And when one car slows down, the one behind them does too, and the one behind that, and … This creates a cluster of slower-moving cars that are the start of a traffic jam. Once everyone is going slow, they can’t all just decide to go fast again. Only the people at the very front can do that.
[CGP Grey has an excellent video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE) about doing what you can to minimize traffic. The short version is: try to stay halfway between the car ahead of you and the one behind you. That keeps the cars as far apart as possible under the circumstances and means fewer people hit those brakes and cause that start of a traffic jam.
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