I just do like the truckers do, leave it in second and crawl. It helps to not be concerned with maintaining a 6 inch gap with the car ahead.
I truly believe that stop and go is caused by automatics. All of the brake tapping tends to bunch people up at the end of long lines forcing them to a complete stop. In a manual just let off on the gas a little and the engine brakes a little, no brake lights to create cascading braking
Brazil is the same. New cars with automatic transmissions are now at least 40% of sales, but on the roads, manual must be still at least 80%, and 10 years ago it'd be virtually 100%. Stop and go exists here since always, Sao Paulo is a nightmare.
Italy has the same stop/go issue. Roundabouts are the main cause, with jammed zip merges coming in second. Both allow only a short burst of cars to pass when at full capacity, which backpropagates into the queue as multiple stop and go.
But it is pretty obvious. In an automatic, you pretty much have to touch the brakes to slow down. In a manual, you have other options. Taking your foot off the gas in a manual tends to slow the car quite a bit more than in an automatic, for example.
While technically true, there is not much practical difference.
Like on a motorbike I tend to tweak slow speeds with the clutch only and leave the throttle in one position most of the time.
With an automatic car since the brakes are not binary and automatic gearboxes have often forward creeping I only tweak the brakes. Helps to force the gearbox into 2nd gear as well for even slower creeping.
In fact, I think automatic gearboxes reduces traffic jams as fewer parts to think of so less likely to accidentally make a mistake and cause congestion.
Wonder how many jams are due to accidental stalling a manual gearbox.
Traffic jams without an automatic gearbox is no fun. (or even less fun)
I've driven quite a bit with both manual and automatic and, while there is definitely a difference, I've found that moving my foot from the gas works quite well in both.
Stop and Go is caused by trying to maintain a constant distance to the front car but isn't caused by automatics, people with stick behave the same.
The simple solution is to behave like an inductor in electronics; if the front car starts, take a bit of time to get going and don't try to maintain the gap. That way you average out the speed of the stop-and-go traffic more than if you were maintaining distance.
It might help to think of stop-and-go as a wave of stop-traffic through go-traffic where the reaction time of drivers shortens or lengthens the stop-traffic duty cycle. If a driver maintains enough distance to eat an entire stop-cycle without stopping themselves, they have effectively nullified the stop-wave. If they can't do the entire cycle they can still help in reducing the duty cycle of the stop wave.
I don't know where you live that you can stay in 2nd and crawl. Where I live, the moment you leave a few inches between your front bumper and the car in front of you, someone is guaranteed to cut you off and force you to brake to prevent hitting them. When I say "inches", I mean inches - 6-8 inches of space is enough for someone to think "I'll just squeeze in here".
When I commuted to work, I'd keep the same tight pattern everyone else used, and it felt like any time I let up, some jerk would take advantage.
Then, for a while, I was suddenly paid to go between buildings on opposite sides of one of the worst traffic cities in the US. I always left with plenty of time and no urgency, so I would just stubbornly maintain plenty of stopping distance while everyone else was inches apart. Smoothing my braking pattern became a game.
If you constantly leave that much room people weaving in becomes rare enough that you barely care when it happens.
I feel like there's some bias affecting perception. Maybe it's a confound, or availability heuristic.
Confound - if you're trying to hug a bumper, and suddenly there's a gap, maybe that's because your lane is suddenly moving faster and someone's taking advantage of that. If you always have space, you'll have it even when your lane is less attractive. (ie, The space doesn't make your lane attractive, the pace does.)
Availability heuristic - if you care about people cutting you off and are adopting a strategy to prevent it, you will notice it more and put more weight on those occurrences than on all the seconds where no one is cutting you off.
Before I had that job, I would have read this comment and thought it was nuts though, so not sure if anyone will actually believe me.
FWIW when in traffic I always try to maintain enough distance ahead of me that I do not have to ever stop completely, and that I can also hopefully not use the brake.
I swear I've watched traffic clear up around me. Of course it's anecdotal, but it tends to keep things moving, even if slowly, rather than bringing everything to a halt.
Do you never merge or change lanes in heavy traffic? Because if you’ve ever done any of those things, you rely on people leaving space and letting you in. Why deny others the same opportunities?
Driving in traffic is a cooperative activity. The only times you don’t need to accommodate and be accommodated by other drivers are when there are hardly any around.
No one was born in the correct lane at the beginning of time. They inserted themselves there at some point. In traffic, the only way they could have done so is to move in front of another driver.
Zipper merging [0] exercises a different kindergarten skill, taking turns. Still, "lines" are a small minority of lane-changing situations, all of which involve taking the open space in an adjacent lane.
Yeah and zipper merges don't increase traffic flow, they combine backup congestion so that the impact of the selfish driver is minimized. It is implemented so those who will not take their turn as intended don't have as much negative impact on other drivers.
"Lines", to use your emphasis, are by far the major time component so for me this is a meaningless distinction. Normal traffic merges should of course be accepted gracefully.
I have a casual theory that driving in the US relies upon every individual enforcing their own idea of what the rules should be, inherent to our culture. I really enjoy driving in Europe, but maybe it's delusional. There's an aggressive indifference that I perceive.
I have driven in both the US and a few European countries, and I would disagree with your proposed cause but agree somewhat with the effect. Having driven on long-distance road trips in the US, drivers are noticeably more competent than in (sub)urban highways, probably because the latter are filled with drivers who don't drive as much at those speeds. This is often inherently true in many western European countries in which driving usually has reasonable public transit alternatives so the selection of drivers on roads may tend to be more skilled and experienced.
That being said, in some European cities drivers are not very keen to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks, even when pedestrians are already in the median "island." I haven't noticed any US city of a similar size that had drivers quite so negligent about crosswalks.
In every US city I've ever spent time in, including San Francisco and Portland, you're taking your life into your own hands every time you use a crosswalk. Or even a sidewalk, as people will just turn into driveways without checking if the sidewalk is clear first.
Keep in mind that slightly depressing your brake pedal without pushing it down turns your brake lights on but you do not actually brake. This is used to warn cars behind you of possible danger ahead.
> just let off on the gas a little and the engine brakes a little, no brake lights to create cascading braking
Same thing with an automatic transmission. With DSG it's obvious why, but even with a torque converter you tend to have a clutch that locks up once there's no need for slip to improve efficiency.
> I truly believe that stop and go is caused by automatics.
If that’s the case then it should eventually be solved by a critical mass of vehicles with adaptive cruise control (assuming they optimize for fuel efficiency and/or smooth acceleration/braking)
What? Stop and go exits because cars brake faster than they accelerate and humans have non-zero reaction time. The average velocity tends to zero until the number of cars on the road is few enough that those factors are less meaningful than the speed limit.
Isn’t it still true that an AT will have a no-pedal-applied speed of > 0 mph, whereas an MT will have a no-pedal-applied speed of 0? (Assuming flat surface and MT in neutral or assuming MT stalls engine in-gear)
Second in a car is optimistic. I often have to put it in first and just let the engine tick over. Some people don't think their car can do this. I'm not sure if that's true or if they are just bad drivers, though. My car will happily roll in third if it's flat.
I find I'm usually able to keep rolling in gear, which doesn't use any more fuel than just idling, and not apply the brakes in most "stop and go" traffic.
My car does it but it's a small diesel 4x4 with gearbox optimized for lower speeds. It happily rolls in the first on low slopes. I have yet to try this with a normal petrol engine car. I have to leave some free space in front of my car and sometimes aggresive drivers from neighbouring lanes will annoyingly slip into that space without signaling, causing a stop on my side.
Yeah, especially not-ancient-TDIs with low and high idle (~800 and ~1100 rpm, out of and in gear, respectively) put out a surprising amount of torque without hitting the gas.
This is what I usually try and do when stuck in a queue, especially on the motorway. First or second depending on the speed of the traffic, clutch up, foot off accelerator. Pointless racing to the stopped car in front of you only to have to stop and start again.
I truly believe that stop and go is caused by automatics. All of the brake tapping tends to bunch people up at the end of long lines forcing them to a complete stop. In a manual just let off on the gas a little and the engine brakes a little, no brake lights to create cascading braking