clueless driver spotted

What were you doing when you took this picture?

 

i know i'll get flagged for this.. but please get a hobby.

a lot of prius drivers drive close to the cars in front of them. not all feel like competing in the next lane, as it requires more fuel to keep that speed.

put your cam down.. or cellphone and drive...

i would have figured, out of respect, that you would have edited out the license place as most members of this forum would have.

 

must've been drafting. or was ten car lengths back and people keep filling in.

 

That in Southern Cali is called daily driving...

 

Probably uncontrolled acceleration - just trying to use the car in front to keep the speed under control.

Tom

 

If I'm reading this correctly, you're saying " I was taking pictures of other cars while driving at 65....boy is that OTHER guy reckless".

 

That Crown Vic, sure looks like it could be a unmarked Mass. State Police car.

 

Three seconds is nice, but not realistic in a lot of cases. If every driver had a three second gap on my drive into work today I can't even imagine how long the traffic jams would be on the freeways and surface streets near on ramps.

 

Actually, the traffic flow would get BETTER, not worse, especially around merge sections. Instead of having to slow down to a near stop, traffic would actually merge.

 

Three second spacing caps the traffic flow to under 1200 cars per lane per hour. In areas commonly carrying 1800-2000 cars/lane/hour, this is a significant reduction in traffic flow capacity.

But it is smoother and safer.

 

My assumption would that higher speeds would be maintained by larger gaps. Therefore, the throughput should remain unchanged (if not better). But that's just my opinion, and it's doubtful there will ever by any way to test this as our general populace is far too dead set on the race for the space in front of them.

 

Hobbit should have put the pedal to the metal and passed the guy on the left and took a video of his face and put it on youtube. Can you say Paparazzi ?

 

This is easy to compute. In my world, there are only 3600 seconds in an hour, so 3 second gaps limit the throughput to under 1200 cars/hour, even if they are traveling at the speed of sound or the speed of light. This capacity is less than the commonly recorded flow rates where tailgating is normal.

Do you live in a world with more seconds in each hour?

 

You speak the language of a traffic engineer....

 

As Adam would say, "I reject your reality, and substitute my own". I guess the point I'm trying to make is, does the 1800 v/hr actually happen? Or are the slowdowns due to merging problems and backups caused by smaller gaps drag that number down to a more realistic 1200 v/hr anyway? Microsimulation of road traffic, and with an 1800 v/hr causes major backups. 1200 v/hr does not.

 

The middle lane is usually the calm, "sane", and safest lane here, even though it carries more traffic. Also, if you use a "3-second rule", someone will merge in to take the space and you'll constantly be slowing down to maintain a safe distance.

Most of the time people in the left lane travel too fast so you can't really move over - you might be OK there for a while but then a huge black acura or BMW SUV races up at 30km/h over the speed limit and rides your nice person until you move over.

If you take the right lane you have to match speed with merging traffic or move left at every major merging intersection. Soon, a huge black acura or BMW will race up at 30km/h over the speed limit, swerve into the center lane, then cut you off to continue speeding.

Not to mention the semis and scary old ladies that can't seem to see over the dash. Ah, traffic.