I have a 30 mile commute to work in the morning, nearly all of it on I-95 in South Florida. I usually leave early enough that traffic, while heavy, is still moving fairly well.
This morning I’m driving along, when I see that traffic is starting to slow down just a little bit. Then I see about a quarter of a mile up ahead there a highway patrol car, with its lights flashing, weaving back and forth across all four lanes of traffic. He’s moving forwards at around 50 mph, and forcing everyone behind him to do the same.
So everyone’s doing about 50, which is certainly slower than a lot of people want to go, but we’re all still moving steadily, no one’s panic braking and slowing things down, at least ahead of me. After about 3 miles of this, the cop just pulls off to the side of the road, everyone speeds up, and we have a mile of clear road ahead of us.
What the hell was that all about? Has anyone ever seen or heard of this practice before? What’s it supposed to accomplish?
Here’s an interesting website that could shed a clue. In short, it discusses traffic flow in terms a being a flowing fluid. The author also speculates on what could be done to eliminate those irritating slowdowns in heavy traffic where nothing unusual seems to be happening, but you have to slow down anyway. What the cop was doing would seem to have the effect that the author was looking for, but is that why he was doing it?
I don’t know that there is an actual factual answer to this, so I chose IMHO instead of GQ. So, Dopers, what do you think?
There may have been an accident or something in the road a few miles further on, and he was slowing traffic down long enough to allow another cop or road worker time to clear it.
Sounds to me like you had a politician in town. If some big-wig is travelling in a motorcade, the cops slow traffic behind it. That way, a possible terrorist can’t get up close.
It also kept us from mooning Gov. Richards when she was in Dallas. Darn DPS…grumble, grumble.
It’s called a “round robin”. Simply put, the cop was slowing down traffic (and in many cases, they stop it altogether) due to a traffic hazard up ahead. It could have been something as simple as debris on the road, which is why you didn’t see anything.
I suppose that could be it. But the length of time that he was in front of us, and the relatively minor decrease in speed, would only have given a minute or two of time to clear whatever it was. And I’ve been driving that route for two years and have never seen them do anything like this before, despite there being hazards on the road every single day. I guess it could be a new thing.
I was once in between two cop cars shooting at each other.
Heard on the news the next morning that a cop car was stolen. FTW? HOW?
Anyway, that really, really sucked.
Happens all the time here in LA.
CHP will slow and create a traffic break for debris to be cleared, a tow truck to get a car turned around to tow (Towing a RWD automatic requries the rear wheels to be off the ground) or to clear an accident.
In an urban setting with lots of on-ramps the officer will start to slow traffic and then just past the last on-ramp before the incident come to a complete stop. This allows us in the front of the pack a front row seat to see the action.
In a more rural setting the cop doing the slow down could be several miles behind the incident as long as there are no on-ramps between the traffic break and the incident.
Might have been a large piece of truck tire in traffic lanes, a ladder that had come out of a truck, or a tow truck making a pickup.
Yes–this happened to us a couple of months ago. It turned out to be a man threatening to jump from an overpass. They eventually stopped traffic and routed out the last exit.
