From Jurph’s link, how we have “rubbernecker slowdowns” without rubberneckers.
The Point: You don’t unclog them by NOT rubbernecking. You unclog them with the “space leaving” before you get to them.
Again, excellent site. . .a guy fleshing out many of my own discombobulations.
But even then, your following distance “eats” a piece of the jam, or at the very least, stops it from propagating further back for a short period of time. The most severe well-established jams cannot be broken up by just one person using these methods, but the idea is to do as much as you can.
If you know that one spot is bad every day, you should find a delivery truck or other professional driver (look at that following distance!) afew miles early, and sit next to them with a good following distance. You establish a “moving roadblock” – all of the cars behind you pay an incremental or marginal price in current speed, but reap the benefits when they arrive at the standing wave and there’s less traffic there.
It sounds like your particular situation is like the I-495 merge with I-270, where a sharp curve, speed decrease, and limited visibility combine with high volume to create a “jam generator” – this is crappy highway design, and you’re right, there’s not much you can do about that sort of persistent effect. But if you can get traffic moving at 45 or 50mph through the turn, you’ll have made a difference until some idiot decides that they need to drop from 50 to 30 right now in the middle of the turn. :smack:
I can’t help but look…especially if the guy in front of me forces me to slow down. The first guy really HAS to slow down if he wants to safely assess his ability to pass the accident. Then it starts…
FYI, in the Philly area rubbernecking is referred to as a “gaper delay.”
As to the optimal strategy for clearing a traffic jam (regardless of cause), shouldn’t this be a rather straightforward problem in queuing theory? Any transit professionals on the board who can speak to this?
Off topic, but doesn’t it make sense to slow down next to an accident to make things safer for all the medical/police/fire people walking around the accident site?
In Michigan, drivers are required to slow down when any emergency vehicle is signaling by the road, and to move into the far lane if one is available. This is to avoid further accidents if debris in the road, ambulance transfers, confused accident victims, or fleeing felons present a danger.
At least that’s the way a state trooper explained it when he pulled me over for not doing so. He was very nice about it and only issued a warning, but I haven’t forgotten.
I don’t buy various posters’ assertions that drivers looking at the accident is not a factor. Accidents frequently cause slowdowns on the other side of a divided interstate. Of course, this applies more in cases where traffic is slowed but still moving 35mph or whatever.
I’ve caught myself slowing down a couple of times. I can’t help thinking, “Is she okay? Should I help somehow?” even when police, paramedics, etc. are on the scene.
Yep.
There is a relatively long tunnel I sometimes drive through which creates traffic problems because people tend to slow down upon entering the tunnel. The road people placed a sign at the entrance of the tunnel that reads, “Maintain Speed Through Tunnel”.
I have always wondered if I could get away with rear ending a slowpoke in the tunnel with the defense that I was obeying posted signage. 
Why is this? Was there a memo? I was born and grew up in Montgomery County, and spent more of my childhood than I care to recall stuck on the Schuylkill Expressway and the PA turnpike to NJ. My whole life, I had heard delays-caused-by-gawkers referred to as “rubbernecking.” Then I go away to New York for a decade, and when I come back to visit my parents now, KYW and all the other radio and TV stations are suddenly talking about “Gaper delay”. WTF? Where did this term come from all of a sudden? I’d never heard of it before in my life.
I completely agree. I carpool with my wife; her job is to look at the accident, mine it to drive. I see many, many drivers, who have been stuck in the same jam as I, rubbernecking. I can see their heads turn, and keep focused on the accident. They slow down. Large spaces open in front of them. People continuing to slow down and stare is DEFINITELY a continued cause of the problem.
And I drive I-25 through Denver and through the TREX construction project every day, so I suspect I see just as much slowing and accidents as anyone else.
The situation is a “gaper’s delay”. The act of looking at that accident is “rubbernecking”. See the difference?
We call 'em Gaper’s Delays in Chicago as well.
Large spaces open as cars accellerate out of the jam. Simply because you can’t accellerate “together”, maintaining the 5 feet of separation you have when you’re going 5 mph.
You seem to be saying that people sit there and gawk without accellerating when spaces open in front of them.
I doubt it.
Even if it is true, it will have a minimal effect on clearing the jam. Which is NOT relieved by people sitting in it for too long, but rather by people coming into it too fast from the back.
Anyone who struggles with that concept should really read that link that Jurph provided.
We moved to the area in 1990, and it was one of those regionalisms that I just accepted as “always been that way.” I wasn’t aware it was a more recent development.
Other examples of Delaware Valley/Philadelphia regionalisms that took some getting used to: down the Shore, the Blue Route and the Schuylkill Expressway (great way to confuse out-of-towners, as the roads are not marked with those names), and wit’ (as in “with fried onions” when ordering as cheesesteak)
During my time in Philly it was always pronounced “Sure Kill”.
I don’t doubt that rubbernecking plays a role, but undoubtedly the main reason traffic slows at an accident is because there is all sort of unusual merging that takes place. Even if the traffic is in the first lane and you are in lane 5, the merging will have an effect as folks keep squeezing to the left.
Not undoubtedly.
For starters, like awldune mentioned, you’re often in a delay on the southbound side of the freeway when the accident is on the northbound side. If anything is undoubtable, it’s that that is caused solely by rubbernecking.
And, there are often accidents that aren’t closing any lanes at all.
But, most of all, the peristence of the “jam” after all accident vehicles and emergency vehicles have been moved is indicative that it’s not rubbernecking that allows a jam to persist, even though it might have been the cause.
Merging is a while different story, and again. . .Jurph’s link goes into detail about it.
Similar law in Texas that they started just a year or two ago: When there’s an emergency vehicle flashing on the side of the road, you either slow to 20MPH below the speed limit (apparantly it’s MUCH easier to react at 45MPH than it is to react at 65, or more likely, 75MPH that people normally drive on highways here) if you don’t want to slow down, you go into the left lane until you have cleared the scene.
And somewhat OT: Back in WWII, “Rubbernecking” was the name for a practice encouraged of military pilots: Always looking in different directions, lest you be suprised by Luftwaffe fighters coming in to shoot at ya. Presumably pilots of all the various air forces had similar practices with their own names for them.
Doubt it all you want, but it’s absolutely true. Instead of staring open-mouthed at the next wreck you find yourself driving by, look at the drivers around you, and you’ll see what I mean. 
And I have read the link. I read it years ago when it was first posted on this board. In fact, the guy who wrote it is, or used to be, a member here. But that doesn’t mean I agree with it, and I don’t believe I’m alone. I seem to recall some opinions that it doesn’t really work that way in real life. I’d love for a traffic engineer to chime in on this.
Oh, ok.
I thought it was just true. . .not absolutely true.
That was my source of confusion.
I do look at other drivers. I look at them as they put the accelerator to the floor after sitting in stop n’ go traffic for the last 10 miles. I look at them as they are just sitting in a traffic jam WITH NOTHING AT ALL TO RUBBERNECK AT.
Do you dispute that jams persist after all things to gawk at have been removed?
Do you dispute that “traffic incidents” occur where jams occur that have nothing to do with rubbernecking or an initial accident?
What do you think happens when all 4 lanes of a highway are closed while a tractor trailer is towed off the side of the road and up the exit ramp leaving nothing to rubberneck at? That 10 mile back up just starts rolling along again at highway speeds?
None of those incidents fit into the framework of thinking that jams persist because of rubbernecking. Once a jam starts, it is a self-propagating beast, rubberneckers or no.
No, I don’t dispute any of those things.
Are you arguining that, invariably, all traffic jams have the exact same cause? because I was under the impression this thread was about rubbernecking, not standing traffic waves, or people who fall asleep, or slow-accellerating cars.
The fact remains that some jams are caused by, and continue to be fed by, rubbernecking. Not all, but the ones we’re talking about here.
Besides, if everyone was at a dead stop, and then an accident was cleared, and everyone started forward at the same time, at the same rate of accelleration, the rear of the pack WOULD instatly start to move. You cannot dispute that the delay when people begin to move from a jam causes a lot of the problems, can you?