eli5 How does traffic work?

142 views

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?

In: 0

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Take a funnel.

Put it under your faucet.

Turn the water low.

The funnel never backs up.

Turn the water halfway.

Funnel starts to back up.

Crank the faucet to full.

Funnel overflows.

There’s only so much capacity on the road, same way there’s only so much diameter to the funnel.

When more water, more cars, attempt to access that same diameter of funnel, the same amount of road, things back up.

You are viewing 1 out of 5 answers, click here to view all answers.