I-80 closed Illinois

How about curbing this tailgating crap everyone wants to do! That is what can happen as the result! When you choose to gamble and lose should I pity you? Only in that you weren't ready to do it! I do however feel sorry for those affected. Im O-U-W-T.

 

The NTSB has some information but determining the criteria that means whether an incident appears here or not is impossible to determine. You will find just a select few of the major crashes over any chosen timeframe. There is no rhyme or reason to what appears here ...

http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AccidentReports.aspx

 

Wait... WHAAATTT!!!???

THAT might require LEO's stop trying to crawl into the anal sphincter of cars they are following.

I totally think LEO's should be focused on ticketing tailgaters rather than speeders.

 

This

 

That's true, they should, but speeders generally are tailgaters, ( that's why they're tailgating) People that I ride with that tail gate, are immediate idiots to me, no matter what the relationship, and I feel very uneasy tailgating. I've mentioned that to these people, who seem to "snap out of it" for a while and back off, and 15 minutes later, they are tailgating again, so it must some short circuit in their brain, or something.

 

It's too many nascar fanatics out here. They see them on TV riding bumper to bumper so they figure it's even more okay [and somehow beneficial] at the much slower speeds of interstate travel

But, the reality is, today, [and putting aside for now the issue of distracted driving resulting in surprise gap closings] with traffic densities getting higher and higher every year and well beyond design limits for many interstate highway segments, traffic compression [to dangerous levels] is going to occur, no matter how well everyone attempts to maintain safe following distance. And summertime construction projects are a major issue to contend with, everywhere you go.

The chain reaction of any one vehicle slowing [in a mass of trailing vehicles] is always going to result in gaps closing at ever faster rates as the cycle progresses rearward. And a more rapid deceleration of any one vehicle, results in an exponentially rapid pace to a "complete stop" of flow at some point to the rear (given enough traffic volume with no means to escape or bypass around)

Plenty of reasons for having to slow, reduced speed construction zones, lane reductions, objects in road, etc. Also slowing very rapidly only exacerbates the problem for all behind. We see this with distracted drivers seeing an obstacle 5 seconds later then they should have (if they were fully alert to road ahead) and then are forced to brake much harder and faster then they ordinarily would have.

You jam enough vehicles onto a roadway, they are going to be closer together. And in some cases we see traffic density increase dramatically, while still maintaining speed norms. Increased density over a given amount of time means less average following distance, and there is no way to get around this that I can envision

An outdated discussion of the subject here, with a bunch of old-school divx vids that you may or may not be able to play ..
http://math.mit.edu/projects/traffic/

But I say all this to say that these incidents are going to increase, deficient brakes, fatigued driving, distracted driving ... all these have crash results when slow/stopped traffic is encountered at the same time. Maintaining following distance is a nice objective to have but at some point becomes an exercise in futility once traffic density has passed a given point. And remember if you near the lead of a long mass of vehicles and have to momentarily slow 3 MPH to maintain safe distance, the person behind you must slow to 4-5 MPH, and the person behind them to 6-7 MPH, and so on and so forth until there is stopped traffic. The "Platooning method" has merit, but only of it can be done in coordinated means with EVERY vehicle involved by means of computer controlled components (vehicles) http://www.tech-faq.com/vehicle-platooning.html

These situations can be dealt with by slowing more, or slowing slightly less and allowing the compression to increase temporarily. Problem is, there will always be a blend of the 2 reactions, so neither one is successful as far as those at the rear are concerned because they are forced to stop regardless.

Granted, plenty of these crashes happen while an otherwise isolated group was following too close, and there is no reason for this. However these situations will naturally occur around you temporarily, throughout the day, and there is nothing you can do except wait them out and/or do what you reasonably can to allow the situation to pass faster by slowing. But still you will find yourself in these clusters from time to time and it's just a reality of the job today.

But HEADS UP and concentrating on driving works every time it's implemented to prevent these sorts of "open-road" rear-end crashes

 

Illinois is among a handful of states that account for more than half of all truck fatalities in the nation. There were nearly 600 fatalities involving large truck accidents in Illinois in the past five years alone.


WOW!!!

 

About 15 years ago I listened to a fascinating interview on NPR with a guy that had a PhD in fluid dynamics. He studied the flow of traffic.

For his dissertation he tried to create a computer program to emulate how traffic flows. He couldn't get it to reflect how traffic becomes "stop and go" like the real world.

Then he had an "Ah Hah!" moment while stuck in rush hour traffic. He went back and modified the program to create a "selfish gene" in the "drivers". He programmed them to try and block other drivers from trying to get in front of them. Instant success. His program modeled real world traffic perfectly.

THEN he had another "Ah hah!" moment in rush hour. He decided that he didn't want to be just another selfish molecule in the fluid dynamics model. So he started trying to drive at a steady rate, so by the time he arrived at stopped traffic ahead it would be moving again.

Then he noticed something peculiar. Traffic ahead, behind, and around him started doing the same thing. In his immediate "sphere of influence" there was little stop and go happening.

So he went back to his computer modeling and decided to inject "unselfish" molecules in the system. He found that only a handful of unselfish units would cause even the preprogrammed selfish molecules to modify their behavior.

For his own driving he made a game of it. Awarding himself one point for every car that merged in front of him to use the open space and negative 10 points every time he had to apply the brakes.

I started playing the game as well, while driving my car. It works. It works well driving a truck. It's also a very Zen like way to drive in heavy traffic. For this reason I have very little stress driving in heavy traffic.

 

^^ This probably works as long as the numbers of selfish and aggressive individuals are relatively minor, but every year the percentage of these individuals in the pool become a bit higher and outweigh the best intentions of the others.

These selfish and aggressive drivers seem to be concentrating themselves into the truck driving trade. Foolish, impatient younger kids, aggressive mindsets, bad attitudes, and drivers from aggressive regions across the globe (think Europe) are becoming more and more numerous on North American roads. So, don't expect things to ever improve or even hold steady at current problem rates. What you see today is just a glimpse into the chaos we will be seeing in the future.