IMO there is nothing worse than drivers on highways who think that by leaving bigger gaps and slowing less rapidly they are 'smoothing' out the traffic and helping the whole road run better. You are not, you are just making the whole road run slower and taking up more space for yourself on a crowded road.
This is untrue, there have been studies done that discovered the primary cause of traffic is following too close. Following further away really does reduce the amount of traffic. It seems unintuitive, but consider: every time you brake, the person behind you has to brake a teensy bit longer. And then the person behind them, and behind them. That little bit of extra time accumulated quickly and grinds the highway to a halt.
Exactly, and that same theory also applies to long slow breaking as well.
What you are refering to is the well known phenomenon of traffic waves or phantom jams. The UK has all but eliminated them with variable speed limits without the need to make every leave half a mile gap between each car.
We have variable speed limits on parts of our roads. People commonly exceed the stated limit by 20+ mph since they're used to "full speed" and ignore the instances where it's being reduced.
I welcome our future robot car overlords where all of these problems should in theory be greatly reduced or eliminated entirely.
Where I live it is impossible to exceed the variable speed limit because every other car on the road is doing it.
I agree, a full network of self driving cars which can all move together in a chain will eliminate this problem. I just hope I live long enough to see it.
However purposely making the cars behind you break more and causing more compression further back just so that you can avoid the compression in front of you is madness.
