Sometimes I feel like people come up on me and don’t pass me because they see my detector visible on my windshield, and think they can “benefit” from following me and avoiding speed traps. Happened a few times during my trip.
Sorry for a bit of a hijack, but do those things really work at all? I always figured if your detector can pick it up, there is a strong likelihood that it already has targeted you. Obviously the more cars around, the less the chances of them pinging you, but still, has it saved your ass at all?
I used to commute along a perfect testbed for this question. It was a bridge, about five miles long with no entrances or exits, three travel lanes westbound, with traffic metered by a set of toll booths. (Eastbound there is no toll, but a light, so things weren’t so clean.)
My observation during several years of driving this was that packs originated from slower cars in the left and center lanes pacing a slow car on the right. (Who was where he was supposed to be, so not at fault for creation of the pack.) When it became possible to thread your way through, there was often 1/4 - 1/2 mile of open road ahead. “Fast” cars going through the blockage tended not to bunch up.
The most dangerous situation was when the three cars were not perfectly abreast. but left just enough of a gap for some cars to weave their way through, often at high speeds.
One more fact. Many cars exited left after the bridge, so there was bunching in the left lane for the last half mile or so. The pack behavior I saw was usually long before any slow car needed to be in the left lane. The bridge was rarely crowded enough to make moving safely over an issue.
So, anyone could be in a pack, but the pack was created by slow drivers in the left and middle lanes pacing the car in the right lane.
Any traffic engineers wishing to study this bridge can PM me.