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To: ExGeeEye

If you’re concerned more about safety and the orderly, predictable flow of traffic, you’ll move over for an overtaking vehicle, rather than playing rolling roadblock to prove a point.

I have a cousin who is a civil engineer for the NC DOT, and he has some interesting terms for traffic flow. One of them is “friction.” “Friction” is bad. “Friction” gets people killed. It’s caused by widely variant speeds on the highway, and people passing in lanes closer to onramps, where they’re unexpected.

Another one of those terms is “slinky effect.” If you’ve ever wondered what’s happening, when you get stalled in traffic for no apparent reason, this is the cause. It’s an echo from an accident or even a distraction on the shoulder, from hours before. It takes a while in heavy traffic, for the stopping and starting to even out, and it can radiate back down the highway for miles.


17 posted on 11/04/2009 9:12:11 AM PST by RegulatorCountry
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To: RegulatorCountry
“Friction” is bad. “Friction” gets people killed. It’s caused by widely variant speeds on the highway

This is why "HOV" lanes that sit largely empty on the freeway, like they do around here, are dangerous. If the main lanes are slow, the occasional HOV going by at high speed is a definite hazard.

24 posted on 11/04/2009 9:27:08 AM PST by HairOfTheDog
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