Ok. What exactly causes Traffic Jams??!!?

Question

Besides the obvious ie: accidents!
*If everyone would just do the dam# speed limit there wouldnt be jams, would there???
What causes them besides accidents??

Answer 1

i HAVE IT ON GOOD ACCOUNT THAT TRAFFIC CAUSES TRAFFIC JAMS.

Answer 2

Cars cannot all step on the gas as soon as the light turns green, so some have to wait and some never even move. Accidents only play a small part. When my mom is waiting to turn left, she pulls into the street even while cars come the other way. As soon as they stop, she goes. However, when the line is long, she is stuck in the middle of the road with the others, causing the jam.

Answer 3

CARS!!! You are right about the speed limit. But the speed limit only works with less cars on the freeway or street. Freeway entrance ramps and side streets are like arteries that feed traffic into the main thoroughfares. Just think of a marathon starting out with 100,000 runners. They start out slow because there are too many people in the same area...just like cars. Less cars on the freeway or street and you can do the speed limit any day. And the one good reason there are accidents is because of drivers trying to do the speed limit when there are 5000 other cars around them. Traffic picks up to the speed limit as more cars exit the freeway or main street, creating enough space to do the speed limit without running into other cars.

Answer 4

Too many people on the road at the same time. I could be stuck in one every day, but I purposely choose to leave for work early to avoid them.

If there's an accident, everybody just has to slow down to see what's going on. I say keep moving before you cause another accident. If the one you're trying to see if bad enough, you'll see it on the news.

Answer 5

You can not blame it on slow drivers alone. I live in Florida, the population is growing daily, the roadways we have are not longer adequate, it is on the news all the time. Of course there are accidents, break downs etc that cause a bottleneck or slow down, but road construction in itself and detours are one of the main problems. We have had sections of roads shut down for weeks to make extra lanes and exits for the excess traffic and it is a nightmare.

Answer 6

There's always gotta be that 1 or 4 idiots. I love it when i'm on the eway and i can see up ahead. And in 4 lanes of traffic i can see everyone stuck behind these 4 cars that are pretending to be pace cars for the indy 500. And when u finally weasel around the morons, there is not a car in site....

LOOK IN YER REARVIEW PEOPLE, if there's a pile of cars behind you and none in front of you MOVE OVER or SPEED UP

Answer 7

When the number of cars increase, the distance the cars take up, plus the distance that must be maintained between cars increases the flow in the same narrow space. Think of it as a water hose, with the inability to increase pressure up to the point of the capacity of the hose. At that point, the water can not pass at a faster rate.

Answer 8

Lookie Looos

Answer 9

Construction.

Answer 10

There are more people on the streets at one time than normal. So the capacity of the streets are maxed out.

Answer 11

Could be numerous of things such as accidents, road block, road contruction going on, detours leading to bottle neck roads etc. etc. .