Plays with YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Traffic Waves

Name: Traffic Waves
Description: A short video from the trafficwaves.org site showing how traffic jams and standing waves form, including the fight between cheaters and blockers at an exit-lane backup. It also touches on how individual driving behavior affects the flow.

wbeaty Explainers

Open on YouTube First HN thread

5 HN users recommended this explainer in 5 different months between 2013 and 2022.

2007–2026

1 strong recommendation 4 recommendations 1 citation HackerTube score 5.5

HN likes it as a fun, clear explainer of traffic waves and of the benefits of leaving gaps while driving.

A short video from the trafficwaves.org site showing how traffic jams and standing waves form, including the fight between cheaters and blockers at an exit-lane backup. It also touches on how individual driving behavior affects the flow.

Pull quote: “One of my favorite videos of all time on this topic: Traffic Waves” (HN, 2022)

Also tagged: traffic waves, traffic jams, standing waves, driving, physics, zen driving

What Hacker News said

6 labeled comments from the HN archive; up to 20 are kept per video, favoring different commenters. Each one links back to the original thread.

Strongly recommends wildrhythms April 2022 under A smartphone app that allows public to submit evidence of speeding drivers

Fun explainer on traffic wave phenomena

One of my favorite videos of all time on this topic: Traffic Waves [this video] (Not new information, but a fun video, and it's something truckers have known about for decades)

View on Hacker News

Recommends thunderbong May 2015 under What Are Traffic Waves and Why Do They Happen So Much?

Helped explain how traffic waves form

I don't know if you've seen this video[0]. It helped me understand traffic waves quite a bit [0] [this video]

View on Hacker News

Recommends xbryanx April 2016 under Can a single car break a traffic jam?

Enjoyable summary of traffic wave ideas

William J Beaty's video on Traffic Waves (linked in the article) is an enjoyable summary of some of these ideas: [this video]

View on Hacker News

Recommends tobmlt September 2018 under How America lost its love for the stick shift

Demonstrates driving to dissolve traffic standing waves

Read the full comment

You beautiful zen traffic wave surfer you. This, a thousand times this. Somewhere on the web there is a great video of a guy doing this pretty effectively. I guess it's maybe five years old now but worth a watch. I think this wsj vid may contain excerpts from the original: [link] If everyone could just relax out there, some of those traffic standing waves would diffuse away to nothing. Ahhh... When I get in bad traffic and struggle against the urge to tailgate I play a game where I try and give enough space to where I just roll up to the car in front of me as it is starting to move again. This gives me a time-local goal to aim at instead of fixating on supposed "bad actors" I might want to judge instead. Edit: I found it! (from 2008 it appears) [this video]

View on Hacker News

Recommends TheSmiddy December 2018 under After 48 hours we haven't seen any sign people are using Waymo's service

Describes advantages of leaving gaps while driving

I leave massive gaps constantly now, it lets me see farther ahead so I can switch lanes when I see a problem coming and my average trip time is definitely shorter because of this. I really like this video for describing some of the advantages of "zen driving": [this video]

View on Hacker News

Citations, criticism and jokes

Cites it socillion June 2013 under The Physics Behind Traffic Jams

Video from the original traffic waves site

Original copy at [link] A video from there, omitted from OP: [this video] OP is a cut-down version of this site, which has been up for a decade or two. I'm curious if it's a legitimate copy.

View on Hacker News