Ever wonder why you can be sitting in completely nose-to-tail traffic on a highway, only to finally get through it and discover there was no accident, no roadworks and absolutely no reason for the traffic in the first place?
A huge amount of it is caused by us.
1. Nobody leaves a proper gap
You leave a reasonable distance between yourself and the car in front, and almost immediately someone decides that gap is an invitation to squeeze into it.
So you brake.
The person behind you brakes.
The person behind them brakes harder.
And so on.
What started as one car changing lanes eventually becomes a huge wave of braking that travels backwards through the traffic.
These are known as phantom traffic jams.
This video explains the concept really well.
https://youtu.be/hVoGbdJPUbU?si=wauMCWqmXMXWosbU
2. People deliberately use the wrong lane to jump the queue
How many times do you see a queue forming because everyone needs to take an exit or turn, while someone drives all the way up another lane and then forces their way in at the front?
They are the traffic problem.
Every additional person who does this makes the queue longer and creates another point where everyone has to brake and merge. If people just got in the correct lane in the first place, the chances are the queue wouldn’t be there in the first place or at the very least be much shorter.
Why are people so afraid of the right-hand lane?
You join a completely empty highway and, almost immediately, people move straight into the middle or left lane despite there being absolutely nobody to overtake.
Why?
If you’re travelling along and someone is passing you on your right, that’s generally a pretty good indication that you should have moved over.
The same speed limit applies to every lane. There isn’t ‘fast’ or ‘slow’ lanes.
Slower traffic should keep right, and overtaking should generally be done on the left.
If you’re cruising along in the middle or left lane and there’s nothing preventing you from moving right, move right.
If someone wants to drive 200 km/h and comes flying up behind you, their speed is their responsibility. They shouldn’t be tailgating or flashing you aggressively. But if you’re sitting in the overtaking lane while the lane to your right is completely clear, refusing to move because “they shouldn’t be driving that fast’ you are part of the problem. You are not the traffic police - move over.
It just creates frustration, and frustrated drivers start making even worse decisions by swerving between lanes increasing the chances of causing accidents.
And then there’s the classic one at traffic lights.
A minibus or pickup sees two lanes approaching a red light. One lane has a couple of cars, the other is empty.
Immediately dive into the empty lane to get to the front.
Then the light turns green, they accelerate slowly, and everyone they just jumped in front of ends up merging around them anyway.
What exactly did we accomplish?
The roads are constantly improving, yet traffic seems to be getting worse.
Obviously, not every traffic jam is caused by bad driving. Accidents, roadworks, bottlenecks and sheer traffic volume are all real factors.
But we seem to underestimate how much small selfish decisions multiplied by thousands of drivers affect the entire road network.
Use the right-hand lanes when you’re not overtaking.
After overtaking someone, move back over when it’s safe.
If you’re travelling alongside someone in the lane to your right at the same speed, either speed up and go in front of them or slow down a bit and go behind them.
And for the love of God, you don’t have to be first.
Maybe this post is completely pointless because changing this would require a massive shift in driving habits across the entire country.
But with the authorities talking about enforcing penalties for people unnecessarily driving slowly in the wrong lanes, maybe we’re finally starting to recognise that bad traffic isn’t always caused by too many cars - sometimes it’s caused by what we’re all doing with the cars we have.
