Traffic Jam: nobody likes it

“Wow, Dominic! Ang swerte mo naman. May kotse ka na”, this is what I used to hear when my friends knew I regularly go to school with a car. Yeah, I was lucky. This routine started out when I used to have my Physics, and I had my Stat 101 immediately after. Though I try to see which of the two ride, IKOT or TOKI, is more time-saving, neither made me on time on that hard-to-reach class--ever. When I got my driver’s license, I asked my parents if I can drive my used-to-be-my-sister’s car since I had the class dilemma. And yeah, my parents let me have the “possession” to that car.

Luxurious, eh? I beg to differ there. Having a car is not an instant ticket out of the daily ride to the bus, the MRT, or the IKOT jeep. Also, do not forget those those long walks (running: a better option when you are going to be late) most especially when from AS to Math. (Btw, have a snippet of how it is to run from AS to Math.)

            All the things, I can tolerate. But there is one thing that really grinds my gear. One that makes having a car a curse also. TRAFFIC. I consider commuters, in this case, very lucky. They can doze off on their seats in the van stuck in the heavy traffic, while I try to tailgate, always on alert, so that I can already avoid the traffic in deep vain. (I drive a manual so this is also a plus-stress).

No wonder there is a particular term for people driving a car who snaps out of those stressful traffics--road rage. I, too, experience that road rage. Ask my orgmates since they know my big frustration to traffics.

When one is stuck in a traffic jam, it is usual to ask what just happened. “Ahhh… there might be a car accident ahead”, you might say. But sometimes, it is a surprise that no accident had happened. “Was there a rally? A lane that is under repair? Huh? Wat O_o … Nothing.” That is the phantom effect. There is no situation to cause the jam. (Let’s exclude the jeepneys, and the buses which brakes into a halt in the middle of the road to unload/load passengers. This is not phantom effect. We know somewhere in EDSA, there must be at least one bus barricading a lane or two given any time in a rush hour. Only in the Philippines)

This phantom effect of traffic jams got the attention of scientists, in particular mathematicians. The initial research began when Benjamin Seibold, professor of mathematics at the College of Science and Technology, was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They were to seek to the cause of the phantom traffic. And, the culprit was this: collective behavior of drivers reacting to the traffic around them.

“We often call them ‘stop-and-go waves’ of traffic, where you drive, and suddenly you have to brake because the person in front of you brakes, and then as a consequence you force the person behind you to brake, and this then triggers a wave that goes backwards on the road, a wave of braking vehicles,”  Seibold said.

The first driver brakes and the one behind has to brake a little bit harder and so on, until somebody comes to a complete halt. In the “braking domino effect” (i.e., the “stop-and-go waves”), a sudden braking of a motorist can be translated into a more powerful wave to the next vehicle. This causes the jam. One small reaction and it causes a major delay far behind the traffic. This is also known as the butterfly effect. (The analogy is that a flap of a butterfly’s wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately create a tornado.)

Now that there is a scientific explanation for these accursed traffic jams, I am hoping that even though there is an increasing numbers of vehicles on the road, there will be solution to this increasing problem. This is a problem not just for me. This is a problem of everyone: jeepney drivers, guys with sports car, the conyos, even the commuters who prefers to ride the train since they are paying taxes for the pothole-filled roads. Well, we motorists wouldn’t want our money (my allowance in my case T_T) to be burned in the fuel tank of our car stuck in the traffic. And also, I don’t want to be more late in my STS class when I leave home late--sometimes too late to the point that I am locked outside the class. (Sorry!)

[Dominic Awa]

 Sources: http://temple-news.com/news/professor-uses-math-solve-traffic-jams/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/7544692/Phantom-traffic-jams-explained.html