Every Hidden Rule of Traffic Explained

Every Hidden Rule of Traffic Explained Traffic runs on rules most drivers never notice. Twenty-two cars on a circular track created a traffic jam out of nothing, a Houston freeway grew to as many as twenty-six lanes and rush hour still got longer, and one of the biggest delivery companies in America plans its routes to avoid left turns. Why the next lane always looks faster, how one steady car can calm a whole ring of traffic, why merging late is actually polite, what ramp meters do, why roundabouts beat intersections, how closing a road can speed traffic up, and the traffic jam that lasted well over a week. Here's every hidden rule of traffic, explained. 0:00 Traffic runs on hidden rules 0:00 Step 1: The first traffic light 0:00 Step 2: Red, yellow and green 0:00 Step 3: The green wave 0:00 Step 4: Why the next lane looks faster 0:00 Step 5: The phantom traffic jam 0:00 Step 6: One car that fixes it 0:00 Step 7: Cruise control 0:00 Step 8: The zipper merge 0:00 Step 9: Ramp meters 0:00 Step 10: Roundabouts 0:00 Step 11: No left turns 0:00 Step 12: The diverging diamond 0:00 Step 13: More lanes, more traffic 0:00 Step 14: Braess's paradox 0:00 Step 15: Gridlock Sources: Smithsonian, the first traffic light: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor... Cleveland's first electric traffic signal: https://clevelandmagazine.com/in-the-... Redelmeier & Tibshirani, Why cars in the next lane seem to go faster (Nature, 1999): https://www.doi.org/10.1038/43360 Sugiyama et al., Traffic jams without bottlenecks (New Journal of Physics, 2008): https://www.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630... Stern et al., Dissipation of stop-and-go waves (2018): https://www.doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.201... Gunter et al., Are commercial adaptive cruise control systems string stable? (2021): https://www.doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2020... Minnesota DOT, zipper merge: https://www.dot.state.mn.us/zippermerge/ FHWA, ramp metering: https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/bn/resources... Minnesota DOT, ramp meter study: https://www.dot.state.mn.us/rampmeter... IIHS, roundabouts: https://www.iihs.org/topics/bibliogra... FHWA, diverging diamond interchange: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications... Duranton & Turner, The fundamental law of road congestion (2011): https://www.doi.org/10.1257/aer.101.6... City Observatory, Katy Freeway: https://cityobservatory.org/reducing-... Braess's paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%... Origin of "gridlock": https://barrypopik.com/blog/gridlock China National Highway 110 traffic jam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_N... #traffic #driving #explained