There is an accident on the highway. The cars move over to the shoulder so traffic can pass. The traffic, however, passes slowly, as the other drivers slow down to take a look at the accident site.
What is this called where you live?
Up here in Minneapolis, it’s called a “gawker slow-down.”
Back home in Chicago, it was called “gaper’s block.”
Out in LA, I heard it refered to as “rubber-neckers.”
Are there other variations? Are there geographical patterns to this? Just curious…
– Beruang
I’ve always heard it referred to as rubbernecking. Somebody once told me that there was a “real” word for the phenonenon – “vertigating.” I think he just made it up, though…
Barry
Yup, called ‘rubbernecking’ here too.
Here in Idaho, we refer to it as “dang idiot people looking at an accident”
Called ‘rubbernecking’ in Fairfax VA.
I heard ‘Rubbernecking’ on the radio the other day in Ireland.
“gaper delay” in PA/NJ
Full text of the following article available online at www.washingtonpost.com for two weeks after the date of the article.
I always called it rubbernecking informally but on the traffic reports here in the Boston area they phenomenon as a whole a “curiosity delay”.
I used to know a rather old and pun-ny guy who called them a peninsula (a neck stuck out to see)
I’ve been in NJ all my life and I’ve never heard that. I’ve always heard rubbernecking.
I heard an airborne traffic reporter refer to it as a “gawk block” several years ago.
Lifelong PA resident and I never heard that one either. The kindest thing I’ve ever heard is rubbernecking.
I think “gaper delay” is a Delaware Valley/Philly phrase. It reaches its pinnacle with accidents on the Schuylkill Expressway, when an accident in one direction has been known to cause a greater delay in the opposite direction from the inevitable gaper delay.
This was one of the questions asked on the dialect survey of linguistics professor Bert Vaux at Dialect Survey Login . You can take the survey yourself, and see all results overlain on a map of the US. Here’s a direct link to the rubbernecking question results.
Yes, it’s a self-selective sample, but so is SDMB! 
If it helps, a friend of mine has the incredibly dull job of working for DOTs to predict traffic flow. He says rubbernecking. It’s actually a huge problem, second only to people slowing down to take a curve.
Jeesh. ‘Gaper Delay’ in Philly Metro Area. Mea Culpa.
(Philly and South Jersey)
Traffic Reports definitely include ‘gaper delay’ updates on areas with accidents.
I always call it ‘‘slowing down to avoid hitting a paramedic, a fireman or even a trafic cop’’.
The radio in Los Angeles calls it “spectator traffic” or “spectator slowing”, but in real life everyone calls it rubbernecking.
Wow. Is this very recent, or extremely old, or something? I grew up in the Valley Forge/King of Prussia area and lived there until the mid-1990s. Never heard of it (even in relation to the Schuylkill Expressway, AKA the Surekill Distressway).