Ok, one more. I'll try to make it a little shorter.
First off, to the biker riders. Yeah, it's almost impossible to go 55MPH on a race bike. 100MPH is like going 60MPH. It's almost not far if your on an openish road.
Anyway. So I'm on the famous 95 South 6PMish. Anyone that knows, you aren't going nowhere fast. Bumper to bumper 2 MPH for... well... hours. Learned my lesson about the HOV times so I'm on the side regular road.
I'm getting sick of braking every 5-10FT so I let the cars pull a head of me 50-100ft and start playing the game, I don't want to stop moving. Of course, I few A holes decide the extra 50FT-100FT in front of me will get them out of the 10 mile back up. So there they go, 20 MPH for 2-3 sec and then .. break lights. Yeep. It's still a traffic jam. IDIOTS. Like if there was somewhere to go, I wouldn't have done it myself. Besides, the space in front of me was only there because I allowed it to be created.
Anyway, so this VA cop pulls me over. I'm totally confused seeing that I was going 2-4 MPH. So I asked nicely, did I do something wrong. He says, yeah, your holding up traffic by going to slow. LMAO. So I nicely mentioned to him, I have been on this road for 30 minutes and I've gone like 2 miles. There is a traffic jam. Are you try to tell me that the 50 ft or so that I have in front of me is stopping all these cars... Even the one is front of me? He though about it for a second and then decided it was stupid to pull me over and let me go. I actually explained to him, it's the cars being to close that is causing the traffic jam. I was actually helping to stop it.
FYI - a traffic jam is caused by to many car .. to close together...going different speeds. Think about it. NASCAR tracks have 50+ car going 100+ MPH inches or feet from each other. Mostly, they do fine. They can all go around the track at top speed. Why do they get in accidents ? Some just spin out while others get to close going different speeds. If they weren't trying to pass each other, they could all do 100MPH round the rack until their tires got to thin. No Problem.
The reality is, traffic jams are mostly self imposed. Try this some time. When you get stuck in one, match the speed of the car next to you and leave as much space ahead of you as possible. Now the car ahead of the car next to you may pull into the open space. Not idea but that ok. That just means the car next to you now has some space to move forward so now you are both going faster. If the car next to you is going to fast so that it is leading you to close to the car ahead of you, let it go and match up with the next one. The car you let go is going to stop in 2 second anyway when it runs up into the traffic. It's not always easy but if you can do it, you will find your drive a lot more enjoyable since you are always moving, you will start to have space ahead of you, and you will find the traffic starts to get unclogged. The problem is spacing and different speed. Just do the reverse and the traffic unclogs. Kind of like undoing a knot.
The easiest why to unclog it would be if all the lanes just stopped and let the cars ahead pull out of sight. Then once there was a 1/2 to mile of open road, all three cars started going 10, 20, 30 mph together. I'd rather being going 10 mph without stopping then 2, then 0, then 2, then 0.
You would be surprised how much of a positive effect you can have on the traffic just doing this by yourself, but you will. Sometimes I will find others vehicles who get the same thing and they are doing it also.
When 1 or 2 other cars join me in doing this, then we all start going 10MPH, then 20, then 30 and before you know it, we are like pace cars and everyone is going 50MPH again with room ahead of us. The faster you go, the more open space you need to leave ahead. The key is to all go the same speed and to not ride up on the traffic ahead of you again or the jam will happen all over again. Oh course, once the traffic gets rolling and your doing 50 MPH with some space ahead ( realize you are riding in a bubble in the traffic jam - the jam is still just ahead of you going bumper to bumper unless it thinned out because of an exit everyone gets off at ) then everyone behind you wants to do 70MPS right back up to the traffic jam so they can clog it up all over again. They don't understand that it was your behavior that opened that space and it's theirs that will close it right back up again. Getting a 18 wheeler next to you makes this a lot easier since they are so long they help you keep space ahead of you without people jumping in front of you. Please they are so big people can't see the open space ahead so it's not calling for them to fill it.
If you can keep this up for a little while, slowing down well ahead of time when you see the red tail lights ahead of you coming on again, then you will always be going the max speed you can without clogging up the traffic again and everyone will be getting where they want to go faster. People that need to change lanes have the space to do it. Some car exit, some come on but the cars don't ever have to stop if people just work together. If your in a traffic, one lane should not be going 10MPH faster then the rest. That is just going to lead to everyone having to stop.
Think of it like water going throw a hose. If the hose is straight with no kinks, the water is all going the same speed threw the hose. No problem. Runners can all run in a pack if they are all going to same speed. If it wasn't for people changing lanes, exiting and people coming on, then every car on that road could be doing 100MPH all the same direction. Literally starting at 0 and going 100MPH in 2sec if that was possible. Something to think about next time your stuck in bumper to bumper traffic. Are you being part of the problem or part of the solution.
OK, maybe this one wasn't to much shorter.