In an overall sense, slower is faster, as Tom Vanderbilt explains in Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). Since traffic is “nonlinear,” accurate traffic predictions are fiendishly difficult to make. Albert Einstein, according to Vanderbilt, observed that “any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”
And the EZ pass?
Nope. Vanderbilt writes that auto-pay systems should reduce vehicular mayhem at the tollbooth by eliminating all that fumbling for change, if nothing else. But it doesn’t work that way: “Drivers approach at a higher speed, with nothing to stop them from zooming through the toll plaza, while other cars, finding themselves in the ‘wrong’ lanes, dart out and jockey among lanes more than they would have under the old system.”
Counter-intuition is the rule of the road. Those dangerous rush hour highways? It turns out that the slower speeds caused by traffic congestion lower the risk of fatal accidents. Statistically, the most dangerous driving is done on secondary roads in low-traffic rural areas, where high speeds, blind curves, and excess alcohol combine to cause carnage on rural two-lane highways.
The entire field of traffic engineering abounds in counter-intuitive findings. A study in Finland showed that adding reflector posts to a curved highway actually increased accidents. It turns out that a curve marked with reflectors and advisory speed signs can lead motorists to go faster around the curve than they ordinarily would. Similarly, “Children at Play” signs do not slow drivers down, or reduce accidents, and some transportation departments have stopped posting school zones for this reason.
As Vanderbilt accesses the matter, “There is a simple mantra you can carry about with you in traffic: When a situation feels dangerous to you, it’s probably more safe than you know; when a situation feels safe, that is precisely when you should feel on guard.”
Sources:
--Patrick T. McCoy, Geza Pesti, et. al. "Dynamic Late Merge-Control Concept for Work Zones on Rural Interstate Highways." Journal of the Transportation Research Board. 2001 1745 20-6. DOI 10.3141/1745-03
--Vanderbilt, Tom. Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). New York, Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
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Breton, P. et al. “Shock Wave Elimination/Reduction by Optimal Coordination of Variable Speed Limits.”Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies. June 2005 13 3 185-209
Kallberg, V.P. “Reflector Posts—Signs of Danger?” Transportation Research Record. 1403 57-66.
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