Clear Night Sky explores themes of digital communications and culture from a variety of sources and points of view and is brought to you by Clear Ink.
Mobile Phones and Traffic Jams
Submitted by Steve Nelson on Mon, 2006-04-24 09:41.
Culture | Technology
Bay Area freeways make a good socio-technical rolling ethnographic observation platform. For example, I've noted that If I see a car ahead driving at 10 mph or more below the flow of traffic in the through lanes, nine times out of ten the driver is using a hand held mobile phone.
Safety studies tend to focus on the use of mobile phones on the likelihood of the gabbing driver to wreck, but I don't think they look at what happens downstream of a driver overcompensating for their distraction by slowing down well below the traffic flow.
I remember Scientific American had a brief article on the physics of traffic jams, but it is unfindable on their site, and anyway they'd make you pay for it. But here's an article that describes the phenomenon, and as a bonus, what you can do about it.
Safety studies tend to focus on the use of mobile phones on the likelihood of the gabbing driver to wreck, but I don't think they look at what happens downstream of a driver overcompensating for their distraction by slowing down well below the traffic flow.
I remember Scientific American had a brief article on the physics of traffic jams, but it is unfindable on their site, and anyway they'd make you pay for it. But here's an article that describes the phenomenon, and as a bonus, what you can do about it.
