Highway traffic happens when there is a stoppage in the flow of cars through a particular area. The longer cars are on the highway (i.e. because of traffic), the more traffic they create and vice versa.

1. Car Clumping is a tendency of drivers to clump in small traveling pods because of the natural tendency to drive up the the car in front of you and trail him regardless of speed. When this happens, cars tend to pile up and if there are multiple lanes with this behavior, a Car Clump will occur, making bottlenecks likely.

2. Driver Overreaction happens when drivers' behavior in neighboring lanes causes an overreaction by the driver. When cars merge onto a highway (as in Diaz. 1 below), drivers in lane 3 and 2 tend to brake, unnecessarily predicting a stoppage and ironically causing a stoppage. Careful driving is important, but driver overreaction unnecessarily leads to traffic.

3. Driver inconsistency is detrimental to flow of traffic. When car A tries to pass car B, it would help if car B maintains its speed. If car B speeds up (usually unintentionally) to match car A's acceleration, car A cannot pass and this creates Car Clumping. Also, consistency in speed helps when drivers are merging to help them gauge how fast they need to go. If they know the cars on the highway are likely to maintain their speed, it is easier for them to merge.

Note: This solution PREVENTS traffic from starting, it doesn't FIX it once it has started.

People in power will tell you that traffic congestion happens because there are too many cars and that they just need to build wider highways. They are wrong. If there isn't a flow of traffic, they can't build enough lanes to meet the need of the travelers. The converse is also true: Fewer lanes can facilitate a higher volume of traffic than they do now if there is a continuous flow of traffic.

The simple solution is to keep traffic flowing through crowded areas. FightTrafficUseCruise's specific solution is twofold: 1. Assign specific speeds to designated lanes and 2. Use cruise control to maintain speed. I will show how each will help reduce traffic if not prevent it from happening.

One of the most common complaints about freeway driving is those of us who drive too slowly in the fast lane. It turns out that most of us do this at some point- whether it's because we're not paying attention or because we're intentionally driving slowly for some reason. We should start paying attention because driving slowly in the fast lane is a major reason for traffic.

Traffic school instructs students to drive slowly in the right lanes and pass in the left lanes, but to use ambiguous words like "slowly" is counterproductive. We've developed a simple formula to help prevent this:

When there are two lanes, the left lane is a PASS lane and the right lane is a MERGE lane. When there are additional lanes, the lanes between are CRUISE lanes at increasing designated speeds. This ensures a safe and predictable flow of traffic at all times on all highways.

Each lane has specific roles, which are self-evident with their names: Pass, 70mph, 65mph, and Merge.

SEE THE LANE DIAGRAMS HERE

Cruise control does three things beneficial for consistent high-speed traffic: 1. Prevents Car Clumping, 2. Prevents Driver Overreaction, and 3. Promotes Consistency.

1. Drivers using cruise drive independent of subconscious tendencies like car clumping. They move ahead when neighboring drivers are slow and clumping, thus helping to break up the clump.

2. When a car in a neighboring lane is altering their speed, cruise helps to prevent that from affecting your speed unconsciously.

3. Cruise aids in traffic flow by allowing people to gage at what speed other drivers are driving.