I can never get my head around why traffic in one direction slows to a crawl when there’s an accident on the other side. I’m specifically talking about multi-lane, divided highways here. I get why you might slow on a smaller or slower road, to pass cautiously or to help if necessary. And I do get the instinct to gawk a little at something dramatic. But I cannot imagine how it starts. There you are, driving along at 100km an hour, and you see a few emergency vehicles and maybe a smashed up car on the other side of the road. Can’t you get the gist of the situation as you pass by at a reasonable speed? Who is that first guy who slows down to like 10km to check it out?
No. Whatever it is on the side of the road or the other lane, I’m certain I’ve seen it before.
Rubberneckers are a myth, I reckon.
People slow down because the car in front of them slowed down - and that car slowed down because the car in front of that one slowed down.
it is necessary to slow down just a little more than the car in front, or else you will collide with it
So it works like this:
An accident happens on the Westbound carriageway
Drivers on the Eastbound carriageway perceive the accident, or smoke arising from it, or emergency vehicle lights/sirens as a hazard - and they slow down a bit
The people behind them slow down a bit more
And so on, until there is a persistent standing wave of slowed traffic.
Within that flow of traffic, there may be people craning their necks to try to understand what’s going on, or satisfy their curiosity, but they are victims of the phenomenon, not the cause of it.
Plus if it is not highway with a very large median strip and there are medical or towing vehicles in the median, you need to watch out for them possibly suddenly moving into your lane.
I agree, mostly. People don’t seem to realize that I necessarily can’t go faster than the car in front of me, or else I’ll run into it, so any slowdown or stopping necessarily propagates.
In addition, if you’re passing close to police or emergency vehicles, I don’t go fast because I don’t want to clip anyone walking around, or suddenly opening a car door.
That said, I do think that there are some rubberneckers – nothing else explains why traffic slows on one side of a divided roadway when the accident is on the other side of the division – but you don’t need a lot of them to slow traffic to a crawl, because of the aforementioned cascading effect.
I know that I, myself, annoyed at the effects of rubberneckers I’ve had to endure, try to avoid looking and to move on as soon as the line in front of me clears away. It’s not greater morality – it’s annoyance at the situation.
No. I do not look over there. I get the instinctual desire to do so -flashy lights and all- but I resist and re-direct to the immediate concern, i.e. what’s in front of me.
and this:
There are other ways to explain it. If I see an accident on the other side of the division, I will automatically take my foot off the accelerator - I might not brake, but anything that might be a hazard up ahead, triggers me to slow down a bit.
Of course it’s not always clear that the accident really is confined to the other side of the division - but even when it is, there could be sudden hazards on this side - people hopping over to try to get away from the danger of the accident, or vehicles piling into the back of the ongoing mess, and ejecting things (vehicles, bits of freight load, wheels, unbelted passengers, etc) onto my side.
The sensible reaction to any trouble occuring in a generally forward direction of me, is to slow down a bit.
I agree though, that there are some people rubbernecking in any such event, but I don’t think they’re often the primary cause.
…except for that one time the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile was crashed on the side of the highway near Harrisburg a few years back. That I’ve never seen before, and I admit I slowed down and took a good, long look. But that one was completely justified. 
Yeah, I think we can give you a special dispensation for that one. 
Almost never. Back when I was first driving on the street I was also racing and learned an important tip/technique. If some horrible accident happens and you ignore it and speed up, your chances if finishing higher increase. For some reason its always been my habit even on the road.
Here in Florida, it’s the law that you have to slow down by 20mph or move over a lane if you’re in the lane next to the shoulder where there’s an accident or police.
So a lot of people have to slow down by law, or try to get over, which adds to the back up.
I admit, I will take a quick peek as I’m going past, just to see how big a mess it is, but generally traffic is slow enough that I can do that.
If it’s a sufficiently impressive wreck, I’ll drop about 5-10mph at a guess.
There, I said it.
Yeah, I get the extra caution if you’re having to actually drive past the situation, but when it’s six lanes and a concrete divider away from you it doesn’t make much sense.
I guess it’s the cascading effect I wasn’t taking into account. I couldn’t imagine how someone could slow down to a crawl on a major highway just to check out a car in a ditch, but I hadn’t been thinking about how that first guy to slow may have only slowed by 5km, but that forces the guy behind him to slow by 6 and so on.
The slowdown escalates rapidly - the first few drivers in the sequence may only drop their foot off the gas - but as soon as someone brakes, the brake lights will cause other drivers to brake, possibly braking a little more than is strictly necessary, but that’s better than not enough.
For the win!
I’m a rubbernecker, guilty as charged. But it’s only because when I’ve been so inconvenienced and annoyed that I’ve been sitting in stop and go traffic and now I’m going to be late, goddammit, I want to see body bags!!
Not a rubbernecker, because I’m too paranoid that the guy in front of me might be. If I’m looking sideways at 40 MPH when the guy in front of me decides to slow down to 20 MPH, the resulting rear-end collision will be my damn fault. Besides, I just got a car I actually like, so I’m not jeopardizing that.
So my product idea of a large screen/barricade that hides an accident scene with a graphic mural of blood/guts/severed limbs displayed instead to desensitize rubberneckers won’t work?