I absolutely love driving and think about it a lot. When I was in high school we watched some video about the future highlighting self piloting cars and how they could drive bumper to bumper. That doesn't make any sense though, you need to leave space for lateral movements.<p>The problem as I see it is that most people think about driving as competitive. They don't want <i>you</i> to get in front of <i>them</i>. This is odd, because someone who is passing one person will often carry on passing and be out of sight in a minute.<p>This is where the idea of driving collaboratively comes in. If you let someone merge, make their exit, pass you, you're enabling flow.<p>Instead, people drive competitively. They get as close as possible to someone's bumper during a merge to ensure that only one (or potentially zero) cars get in front of them. This forces people to stop or slow considerably before someone can get in front of them. The same with passing, if someone is blocking the fast lane, the passing car needs to slow considerably (affecting cars behind them) and change lanes (affecting cars in another lane). Everyone thinks it's about them, and some will even speed up when you try to pass as if you are insulting the speed that they are driving. It's madness.<p>If I ever have a ton of money I'm going to take out a national ad campaign encouraging people to drive collaboratively.
Certainly an interesting topic and one which if exploited could improve travel for many. My question, though is whether it's possible to improve the situation without the recourse to technology? i.e. if you looked ahead on the road and saw a small jam (but one at a distance which was say 400 meters ahead), but which clears quickly, if a certain way of modulating your speed would help? Or is the only way to recognise it late, and brake as hard as possible (as I see so often!)?