Maybe you are innocent, but there are plenty of people who, after the person in front speeds up, keep slowing down to see what is going on. Why else do you think that the other side of a freeway slows down?
This is nothing new, I remember Fearless Fred Feldman the airborne traffic guy in NY talking about rubberneckers 45 years ago.
If I hear that the accident is just in front of me, it makes sense to wait. If the accident is four exits ahead of me, I can get off and take the side roads - so it can help.
My complaint about the traffic reports here is that the station with the best reporting ignores the road I take, unless there is a big problem. And I agree that checking on-line traffic before you leave is the best solution. Google Maps with traffic is the number one app I use on my Android.
Where I used to work there were two more or less equally long ways of getting home, on either side of the Bay, so traffic reports determined which I chose.
Here is an example of how Google helps. On Saturday I drove from Anaheim up to the Bay Area. I-5, the shortest and fastest way, has one lane closed for construction. When I came down I could see that there was a backup, so I took 101. Coming back I saw that there appeared to be no backup, so I risked 5. I zipped past the construction at 75, and cut an hour or more off my trip.
Information is good.
What year was that?
About 12/14 years ago (or something like that) I was in the same area stuck in a really bad accident/traffic jam. They shut down the freeway for a long time.
We ended up doing a u-turn through the median (along with a bunch of other cars), headed northbound and then found some alternate highways around it.
Or their information is not curent.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on 520 when I here one of the following:
The other side of the freeway slows down because, and this seems to be a difficult concept to get across, if one car in a lane slows down, the whole following traffic in that lane will have to slow down because the lane cannot speed up again until the rush hour is over,or until the traffic significantly is reduced. And you will ALWAYS find that one idiot who slows down, whether or not it is your sided of the freeway, or the opposite side. This is about the most basic concept of traffic flow. Just as reliable and inevitable as gravity.
Get the book “Traffic” by Thomas White. Goes into this stuff in detail. Extramely interesting.
A little clarification on my previous post. If a lane is flowing at the capacity that allows say 60 mph, it has a certain capacity per hour. Now assume that we have a distraction occuring, a traffic ticket being written over on the shoulder (always accompanied by a very distracting light show), ar a little fender bender, or something more significant.
Anyway, some schmuck will inevitably slow down to see what’s going on. This will result in a reduction of capacity in that lane from around twelve or thirteen vehicles per minute down to three or four. The instant this happens, that lane will stay at the reduced capacity until the traffic thins out again, and the rush hour is over - no matter how the following drivers wish to keep up their speed. And on a freeway, both the lanes adjacent to the distraction and the lanes on the opposite side, you will always get that idiot driver who is going to slow down and look.
After this happens, all following traffic is forced to slow - there is no chioice in this matter. That’s why I find the use of the phrase “looky-loos” or “rubbernecks”, applied to all the drivers in the jam to be so insulting and condescending.
Even dumber, they straightened the “S Curves” in, what, 1990? So you can’t even find them on a map anymore, unless a local points you to where they used to be. (Now it’s basically just a single long curve.)
I don’t know if it’s just Washington State, or a world-wide thing, but it’s not just traffic reporters. There are tons of locations in Washington State with names like “Thrasher’s Corner” that are left-over from the 1920s (I guess?) when some guy named Thrasher ran a store on that spot, but we still call it that even though it’s not on any map you’ll ever see.
… actually I take that back, I just looked on Google’s map and it is indeed labeled Thrasher’s Corner. Well shoot.
I have two main options on my way to work… major roads, or back roads. Major roads typically take 15-20 minutes. Back roads take 25-30 minutes.
There is only one option for main roads, and if something happens it can easily change to an hour plus.
Back roads, there are tons of options where I can drop down a couple of blocks, or move up a couple of blocks, and overall, the whole commute will still be in the same range.
I rely on the traffic reports every morning to tell me which option I should take.
Same here, although I don’t commute every day. This question is weird to me. I make driving decisions based on traffic reports all the time. Do I want to go through the city and up the Kennedy, or should take the Tri-State via the Stevenson or is the Ike, by some miracle, okay?
Honestly, if some thing unusual is happening, it is generally a good idea to slow down to your poorest reaction time; and, yes, then every one behind you has to slow down, but it’s still better than taking out a deer or a Statie at 70 mph, isn’t it?
But most of the traffic slow downs around here are people entering the highway and immediately changing lanes - at 30 mph. I do not know why everyone is allergic to the right hand lane.
Sure you can. This morning the Kennedy sucked (shocking, I know. Bastards fooled me by temporarily speeding up past Western, so I thought it was okay. Traffic on the Eights doesn’t help at 5 minutes past the hour…), so I got off at Armitage, took Paulina to Milkwaukee to Ashland (I think…) and hopped onto 290, and took it back to 90/94 after the whole Ohio Feeder/Circle interchange nightmare. Took me only 6 minutes longer than the theoretical “the Kennedy’s fine” time, but that was 14 minutes less than the actual delay.
Now, I’ll grant you I couldn’t have done that a year ago, because I just didn’t know the sneaky side routes. But they’re there. 
Would you believe the Ike was okay today?! Like a dream all the way from the near south side out to Hillside…I was stunned. I was actually too early and had to kill some time doing paperwork in my car while the Physical Therapist finished with my patient! (Totally sucked on the way home, though.)
But I too wish they didn’t refer to things by their localisms. Took me at least 8 years of living here to figure out that The Ike = The Eisenhower = I-290. Can we just pick one, please? Preferably the number name that’s actually on all the signs?
You commuted between Anaheim and the Bay Area?
Wait, didn’t you grow up here in the Chicagoland area? This wasn’t part of your elementary school education?
Besides, there is some utility to the names. The Kennedy and Dan Ryan both refer to I-90/94, but different parts of it (the line being the Circle Interchange, where I-290/the Ike intersects). Edens is a branch of 90. Bishop Ford and Kingery (which, admittedly, is only a three-mile stretch of road) refer to sections of I-94.
Heh. I grew up in Tinley Park. If it wasn’t on Clark and Belmont, I didn’t go there until I moved here in my mid-20s. 
I listen to the traffic report right after the alarm goes off, but I don’t really need to. I’ve never had a problem on my 13 mile commute–as long as I’m out the door by 0630, I’m good.
When I head down to SoCal, I tune in to the LA traffic reports as soon as I can pick up KFI or KABC. As long as I get a 10 minute notice I can usually figure out an alternate route. Even so, it’s a crapshoot in LA. You can run into a back up on any freeway at any time of the day or night.
I do remember that, but I thought they taught you that kind of stuff down there!
I remember back in the late '70s when I lived in Middle of Nowhere Nevada stretching a long AM antenna out on the lawn and picking up KFI and being astonished that they gave traffic reports around the clock. I thought that Los Angeles is one busy place.
Aw, hells, no. North of 95th on our maps it said “Here Be Dragons and Black People”. Good lord, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough…