I've seen a paper about how to reduce traffic jams which cited a paper that apparently said that yes you can have that effect.
You see, what happens is that the person behind the first rubber-necker breaks slightly harder than they need to to avoid hitting them, and then the next one breaks slightly harder again and so on…
If people actually maintained sensible distances between themselves and the people in front then they'd slow down more sensibly and you'd get negative feedback, rather than positive.
I make it a point to follow further than i "need" to, for precisely this reason. I can coast to handle most of the normal "braking without stopping" scenarios, which is much more efficient for both traffic patterns and my own fuel consumption.
It also gives me room to maneuver in, a little runway to pick up the extra 20mph needed to really blow some jackass's doors off. But that's just a happy consequence of an efficiency-based strategy. I swear.
I do the lots of stopping distance approach on motorways too. This is partly compensation for my (suspected) slower reaction times due to driving infrequently, and partly a response to having read some New Scientist article years ago about the compression wave caused by people driving too closely together and then having to brake suddenly.
Also, I'm usually driving hire cars and I don't want to pay any excess on the shiny cars. I could pay extra to reduce the excess, but I find the prospect of incurring large costs if I'm stupid is a handy motivator (and saves me money every trip so far).
You see, what happens is that the person behind the first rubber-necker breaks slightly harder than they need to to avoid hitting them, and then the next one breaks slightly harder again and so on…
This has a name in traffic management circles, which I've completely forgotten as I'm not doing political work in that area any more.
One of the Police Stop videos actually has a very good example on it, filmed mostly from helicopter.
Oh, I remembered - it's called a compression wave effect or something like that. Makes sense.
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You see, what happens is that the person behind the first rubber-necker breaks slightly harder than they need to to avoid hitting them, and then the next one breaks slightly harder again and so on…
If people actually maintained sensible distances between themselves and the people in front then they'd slow down more sensibly and you'd get negative feedback, rather than positive.
It also gives me room to maneuver in, a little runway to pick up the extra 20mph needed to really blow some jackass's doors off. But that's just a happy consequence of an efficiency-based strategy. I swear.
Also, I'm usually driving hire cars and I don't want to pay any excess on the shiny cars. I could pay extra to reduce the excess, but I find the prospect of incurring large costs if I'm stupid is a handy motivator (and saves me money every trip so far).
This has a name in traffic management circles, which I've completely forgotten as I'm not doing political work in that area any more.
One of the Police Stop videos actually has a very good example on it, filmed mostly from helicopter.
Oh, I remembered - it's called a compression wave effect or something like that. Makes sense.