I finally stopped to look more closely. These ripples are about 10 inches wide ands look to be almost exactly uniform through long stretches of road. Where does this precision come from?
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Years ago, Scientific American had an Amateur Scientist column where someone tested this with a home made rig of a bicycle wheel on a long arm and using split peas for dirt in his driveway.
He came to the conclusion that the bumps were formed by the “dirt” being pushed in front of the wheel like a bow wave until it was driven over. Then the process would repeat. The corrugations would grow over time and even propagate if you watched them over time.
Tl:dr the tire pushes a bit of dirt into a mound before driving over it. They grow as the process repeats.
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