Speed Variation Tolerance in Single Lane Traffic

As more drivers use the roadways in the U.S. and abroad, traffic problems only become more important to understand and, hopefully, resolve. Among the long list of traffic problems, traffic jams are quite near the top. The ”shockwave traffic” theory has emerged recently as a promising way to model the propagation of these traffic jams by describing them as waves.[1] In this theory, the shockwaves are mostly described by differences in speeds between groups of cars. One of the most interesting aspects of this theory is the idea that traffic jams are not necessarily caused by tight roadway, but by the interaction between different speed groups, a fact that is backed up by experimental evidence.[3]