Is there anything wrong with my traffic-helping idea?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Was inching past another fender-bender on I-35 the other day, and I had a ridiculously simple concept. Would it be too big an effort for police, EMS etc. to have some kind of pop-up barrier that simply blocks the view of a wreck from passing cars? Something that’s big and orange, so you know there’s a wreck, but you don’t have anything to look at as you scooch past. Rubber-necking could certainly improve, methinks.

The primary thing I can think is wrong with this is the practical matter of designing a barrier that folds compactly, but pops itself open to a large-enough size that it blocks a passing car’s view of whatever carnage there is to see.

Are there other reasons such an idea wouldn’t be a good idea?

(Note, I’m not trying to get rich off this idea, just to save five minutes off my traffic-delays when there’s a wreck. So if anyone wants to design this and make millions off it, be my guest!)

2

I would also have to be heavy enough to not blow away and stable enough to not blow over. Something like hurricane fencing. It couldn’t be solid, but provide enough of a interference to sight that nothing could catch your eye. Might just make the problem worse, though.

3

As would the fence. :smack:

4

It’d have to be awful large. You’d have to account for covering up 2 cars, and an ambulance. And the 2 cars could be 2 F-250’s or 2 large vans.

Then the barrier would have to be placed as such so EMTs and all their equipment can fit behind it, as well as enough clearance for a gurney or a board. And everyone needs ample room to move around. So now the fender-bender is taking up a hell of alot more room on the highway, not to mention blocking the view of other motorists who need to be watching out for emergency personnel possibly coming out from around it.

So now you’ve got EMTs and cops who are there to get the victims clear of the wreck and not injure anyone further - but they’ve got to stop and set up this huge barrier thing first and place it properly.

Oh, and if the ambulance or cop is to make a quick getaway, the barrier needs to have an opening at the front and the back, unless they need to wait to remove the barrier before pulling out. If the barrier has an opening at the back, people will slow down to peer into the barrier as they come up on the accident.

And don’t forget about divided highways. To keep people from gawking from the other direction, your barrier needs two sides.

I say the barrier won’t do.

Invisibility cloak, however…indeed!

5

I know it’s annoying to drivers in a hurry, but is the rubber-necking all that bad? The emergency personnel probably want the traffic to slow down to make life safer for themselves and the victims.

6

When you’re on the opposite side of a divided highway & have been stuck in traffic for 20 minutes because some jackass wants to get a good look at the blood & guts…yeah, rubbernecking is bad.

As to the OP - I suspect you wouldn’t actually solve the problem. People would still slow down on the off-chance they could catch a glimpse of the wreckage through the barrier.

7

Here in MD I have driven past partitions that looked almost what you describe. They didn’t pop up from the ground or anything, but they did block the wreckage. Thing is, they still didn’t do any good. You get all those pretty flashing lights, commotion and people still stare.

8

It’s not necessarily literal rubberneckers – those who slow down from a little over the speed limit to 20mph to stare at the crash. After all, if there is a crash on the other side of the road a lot of times there is wreckage, cars, or emergency personnel on your side as well. If you just lower your speed by as little as 10 mph, the next person will have to brake a little, then the next some more, until you have line of cars going at 20 mph. And since traffic problems rarely propagate forward, it will appear that everyone is stopping to stare at the crash, when in actuality they are simply being cautious (after all, if everyone is going at 20 mph and you can’t see ahead of you due to the traffic you can’t see if there are emergency personnel on our side of the road.)

9

I suspect it wouldn’t do any good. If anyone is seriously hurt setting up an anti-rubberneck device would be about priority 27. Anything big enough to be effective would be too large to carry on the ambulance, and probably a lot of fire trucks. Lastly, as mentioned, it’d be difficult to design something that would effectively block the accident scene without making egress difficult for ambulances, tow trucks, etc.

The main problem with rubbernecking is that people stop paying attention to the vehicles around them and drive dangerously and cause more accidents.

St. Urho
Paramedic

10

I’ve been rear-ended by them. That means there’s now ANOTHER accident on an already jammed up freeway.

Another problem with the fence. The people on the otherside wouldn’t have any chance to get out of the way if someone isn’t paying attention and drives into it.

11

I very often try to make exactly this point and I couldn’t have said it better myself. To anyone complaining about rubbernecking; ask yourself; why is it always everybody else that seems to do it, but not you? The reason is that they’re not rubbernecking at all; just like you; they encounter an area of stationary traffic; the choices are: a)collide with it or b)slow down yourself. So they slow down, so the driver behind them is faced with the same choice and does the same; and so on.

Certainly once people have been forced to slow down, it’s quite common that they will take a look around, wondering “why the hell have we all stopped?”.

12

I’d suspect this would render this otherwise good idea less than useful. Remember that highway traffic speeds lower than 35mph always become stop-and-go, without fail.

13

I think this is a problem that needs solving.
Sadly I agree that drivers on the opposite side would peer at the barrier, taking their attention away from the road ahead.

I do get depressed by the behaviour of some drivers. Motorway cameras repeatedly show how a collision turns into a pile-up as drivers ignore warning signs to slow down, then plough into the wreckage ahead.

14

One method to discourage gawkers would be to erect an array of high-intensity lasers at the crash site and then instruct motorists not to slow down and stare, lest they suffer retinal damage

I’d recommend a phased-plasma lasers in the 40-watt range.

15

I seem to remember this being tried, it may have been in the L.A. area, about 12-15 years back. I’m sure the logistics would make it impractical, more vehicle to haul the screens, more personel to erect and remove. Priorities at accident scenes are rendering aid to the injured and clearing the roadway, in most cases setting up screens would interfer w/ these.

16

Moved to IMHO.

-xash
General Questions Moderator

17

You can build roads with partitions a few feet high in the median strip–enough to prevent gaper’s blocks from forming in the opposite direction of travel. (Is there anything more frustrating than suffering through a jam-up, and then finding your lanes are completely unobstructed and people are slowing down to gape at a bunch of gap-toothed troglodytes standing around their stalled beater on the opposite side of the highway?)

These seem to be becoming more common in the Chicago area, although I can’t swear that gape prevention is the reason.

18

Wouldn’t work. The “rubbernecking” factor is overreated.

I think the OP is misinterpreting the cause of the jam.

Once the initial slowdown starts from either looking at the original accident, or just by having people go to their brakes in a small moment of panic, THE JAM EXISTS. The slowdown is not caused by successive rubberneckers after a point, but by the ORIGINAL rubberneckers.

Jams persist even after accidents have been moved. You’ve surely seen that. When traffic is moving along at 70 mph and there is a big slowdown, the JAM has begun and it’s going to survive.

Imagine if you were somehow to instantly remove the “attraction”. Or, put up your barriers. What happens? The OP supposes that the jam just frees itself all at once because there’s nothing to look at.

In reality, you have the first car accelerate; when the second car sees it, and gets his room, he accelerates; when the third car sees that, and gets space. . .well, you get the point. If you have 20 cars in the jam, the last 15 cars are still going 20 when the first 5 cars are accelerating away.

However, the whole time these cars are accelerating from 20 mph to 70 mph, additional cars travelling 70 are running into the back of the JAM which is still moving at 20 mph; if there is enough volume on the road, even with no attraction, the jam is not relieved, but can still propagate backwards.

Think about what you do when you see an accident. You’re sitting in a slow moving patch of traffic behind me. You’re not rubbernecking. I’m not rubbernecking; I’m just going the speed of the guy in front of me, and when he finally accelerates, I accelerate a second later. But, he’s not rubbernecking either, he’s going the speed of the guy in front of him.

After the initial rubberneckers, no one has to rubberneck at all for the jam to persist. The jam doesn’t clear until volume drops enough so that there is enough space between the last car doing 20 and the next car doing 70 so that by the time the guy doing 70 has reached the jam, the guy doing 20 has accelerated sufficiently.

19

No, but the jam does eventually free itself. As long as the “attraction” persists, it doesn’t.

Jam + attraction = continued jam, because people rubberneck.
Jam + no attraction = gradually dissipating jam, because there’s nothing to see.

The proposal by the OP may be impractical for safety reasons, but not because rubbernecking doesn’t contribute to traffic jams.

Come on, we’ve all been behind the yahoo who gets to the front of the jam, and finally finds open road ahead of him, and still doesn’t accelerate because he’s busy studying the gaps in the teeth of the morons standing around their car-be-cued beater. God, I hate those people.

20

EXACTLY!

In addition, think for a moment… there probably weren’t any original rubberneckers. After all, an accident occurred! Unless the cars involved in the accident were able to get off the road in a matter of seconds, the accident would cause all the approaching cars to halt. If the cars in the accident could limp to the side, this would not cure the backup. Once it was triggered, it grows continuously larger.

Another issue: this kind of traffic jam is very similar to “traffic waves” which propagate backwards, but which don’t necessarily grow larger. However, if an accident scene is “pinning” the wave in place… the accident can only pin the downstream edge of the wave. The upstream edge of the wave will keep moving backwards as more cars pile onto the back of the congested section. So here’s a general rule:

If something pins a traffic wave in place, the wave can grow to enormous size.

Ususally it’s a clogged merge zone which creates these pinned, constantly-growing waves. But sometimes it can be a blind hill or curve, or a place where the sun hits drivers eyes.

The police can easily unpin the wave so it stops growing. An official car must approach the jam while maintaining a forward space of a few thousand feet. When the huge empty space reaches the accident scene, that car suddenly accelerates up to the speed limit. All the cars behind will do the same (since after all, none of them are anywhere near the accident scene.) When they reach the accident scene they are driving fast and have no reason to slow down. Of course this doesn’t wipe out the jam. It only un-pins it, so it stops growing and starts propagating backwards like any other traffic wave.