We know for a fact that you have experienced the frustration that comes from being in a traffic jam but have you ever wondered how do these traffic jams work? A new simulator enables you to create your own traffic jams to understand their dynamics and how they can be caused without any accident taking place. The circular traffic simulator was designed by Martin Treiber from Dresden University of Technology in Germany. The idea behind the creation of this simulator was to impart a better understanding of traffic jams and how they occur to common folk along with showing them how varying effects of multiple factors can contribute towards traffic problems – think of a slow car in the middle lane.
You can check out the simulator over here. Don’t be fooled though, it is a lot more scientific than it might appear to be. The user is able to vary a multitude of various variables including the percentage of trucks on a road and the effect isn’t as obvious as you would think. Some of the crucial variables for understanding and preventing the traffic flows are the density of cars and the road’s spread. Increased speed results in reduced reaction time whereas increased density implies reduction in freedom of places that the drivers can go in order to avoid accidents.
Apart from being able to take your frustration by making virtual cars get stuck in a circular traffic jam, you can also learn quite a bit about the math that takes place behind the traffic and the effort that engineers put into designing a road.
If you’re thinking that having cars drive in a circular path would result in the creation of a perfect continuous flow; you couldn’t be anymore wrong. The traffic jam always occurs when the density of cars exceeds that of the designed value. Do let us know what you think of the simulator.