Crosstown Traffic

The traffic was terrible this morning. It's bad most mornings, to be honest, but it was terrible this morning.

We drive in about 15 miles on a dual carriageway each day. Sometimes the traffic is held up by a tractor on the road (aside: in Iceland, tractors seem to be banned from some commuter roads during rush hour). But most days there's nothing actually holding up the traffic. So what's the problem?

Personally, I like to leave space in front of me. It's called braking distance. But if you do that, damn it, someone will pull into the space, so you have to touch your brakes. If everyone is driving too close, then this perpetuates a "wave" of braking behind you. There's a great article about that here (I found it after we visited Seattle some year back but I was reminded of it when Ethan Hunt said something similar in MI:III!) The analysis says that non-competitive driving can eliminate these types of jams - so there's another good reason for being a nice driver.

Did you know that in the Aberdeen area BMW's are sold without indicators? Or is that just my perception.....