The WELL: inkwell.vue.367: Tom Vanderbilt, "Traffic"

#71: Gail Williams (gail) Tue 3 Nov 09 14:31

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:31:00 PST

Tom kind of faded away on us, but I do want to post a thanks. If you get back here you're welcome to jump back in of course.

Thanks to Sharon, too.

And for anybody who is not sure what the next conversation is about -- there is a lot of overlap. If we credit or blame road and car designers for some of our social behavior getting from point A to B on the ground, there is an analogy, though not a direct translation, in the design choices for social websites, and behavior online. Some of the details and implications of those choices are pretty interesting...

That's

<http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/368/Christian-Crumlish-Designing-Soc-page01.html>

if you are not logged in, or drop by <inkwell.vue.368> if you are. [Read entire topic]

#70: paralyzed by a question like that (debunix) Sat 31 Oct 09 07:27

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:27:00 PDT

Heard the second story--and doubt very much that the researchers said that they "can't help it" as they were telling the story.

But the first one is pretty terrifying. Russian roulette with who knows how many other people's lives at risk. Eeep. [Read entire topic]

#69: Sharon Lynne Fisher (slf) Sat 31 Oct 09 07:18

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:18:00 PDT

Wish I'd seen these before this interview ended, but perhaps people are still peeking in:

SOFIA (Reuters) * Bulgarian prosecutors are investigating a new gambling game in which drivers defy death by speeding through red lights for bets of up to 5,000 euros ($7,400), the chief prosecutor's office said Thursday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091029/od_nm/us_crime_roulette_odd

WASHINGTON (Reuters) * No need to curse that bad driver weaving in and out of the lane in front of you -- he cannot help it, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday. They found that people with a particular gene variant performed more than 20 percent worse on a driving test than people with a different DNA sequence. The study may explain why there are so many bad drivers out there -- about 30 percent of Americans have the variant, the team at the University of California Irvine found.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091029/od_nm/us_genes_driving_odd [Read entire topic]

#68: Mark McDonough (mcdee) Thu 29 Oct 09 05:30

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:30:00 PDT

Yup, I think so too. A lot of the parkways around the NYC area were designed in the mid 1920s (although it took a while to fund and fully construct them). They've all been upgraded to some degree, but require close attention in a modern car at modern speeds. Of course, not everyone gives them full attention, which is one of the reasons they require full attention. [Read entire topic]

#67: Andrew Alden (alden) Wed 28 Oct 09 20:30

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:30:00 PDT

I think the oldest freeways were designed for Model T's. [Read entire topic]

#66: Gail Williams (gail) Wed 28 Oct 09 08:46

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:46:00 PDT

(I am going to guess it is the age of the freeways, and that the older SoCal ones got state funds for rebuilding sooner in their lifespan because of the political clout of the southland, but that's just a guess.) [Read entire topic]

#65: Linda Castellani (castle) Wed 28 Oct 09 03:13

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:13:00 PDT

Tom, I have a question for you:

I grew up in Southern California and freeways grew up at about the same time.

When I moved to Northern California, I was astonished at how different the freeways were, and not for the better.

In Southern California, transitions between freeways are designed to be smooth and merges are barely noticeable (with a few notable exceptions on older freeways around downtown).

In Northern California, transitions appear to be afterthoughts, tacked on as though someone had a thought halfway through the design that, oh, people might also want to go that way from here, and predictably, the worst traffic jams are at the bottlenecks created by the need for people from the right needed to merge to the left in a very short distance, and vice versa.

And there are some overpasses that I absolutely cannot drive because they are so high - two narrow lanes with no shoulders - and I think it's only a matter of time before I go over the side.

Sometimes I think that the freeways in Southern California were designed by engineers, and the freeways in Northern California were designed by the interns.

My question is, how can the freeway systems in one state be so vastly different? [Read entire topic]

#64: David Albert (aslan) Wed 28 Oct 09 02:45

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:45:00 PDT

If we're talking about two lanes converging into one so that all traffic can get through a bottleneck, it seems to me that the only number you need to measure is the number of cars per minute going through the bottleneck, which should be a simple function of the speed of the cars at the point that they go through the bottleneck, and the distance between the cars at that time.

If drivers all did what we were taught at some point in driver's ed and kept exactly two seconds behind the previous car no matter what speed we were going (four seconds in wet weather), then the function gets even smoother: it doesn't matter WHAT speed the cars are going when they go through -- exactly 30 cars per minute will go through the bottleneck in good weather, 15 cars per minute in bad weather.

And it shouldn't really matter WHEN the merging occurs, unless it slows things down EXACTLY at the bottleneck and not ONE car before. Which I can't quite picture happening. [Read entire topic]

#63: noahj (noahj) Tue 27 Oct 09 19:51

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:51:00 PDT

And there was a period a few years ago when a few Yosemite bears figured out what to do with Dodge Caravans. All the bear had to do was jump up and down on top of the vans, and eventually the doors would pop open. I remember seeing a video of this (unfortunately, pre youtube).

But fortunately, bears do not jump on moving minivans, of any make, in traffic. So back to traffic...

So tell us about late mergers vs. early mergers. I remember something about this a while ago, and the notion that "late mergers were quite rationally utilizing the highway*s maximum capacity, thus making life better for everyone". An aerodynamic engineer would view traffic as a flow, with the understanding that laminar flow is good, and that turbulent flow is very, very bad. Drag increases radically when flow becomes turbulent, with a corresponding decrease in speed. Late merging seems to be nothing more than turbulent flow, a big rock in the stream. Where did this notion of "maximizing the highway's capacity" come from, anyway? [Read entire topic]

#62: Linda Castellani (castle) Tue 27 Oct 09 19:27

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:27:00 PDT

Wind wings we used to call those little windows. You could stick your cigarette out the window and tap the ash without opening the whole window and disturbing your passengers with the resulting rush of air. [Read entire topic]