Route Fifty
By Daniel C. Vock,
JULY 17, 2023
Vanderbilt University researchers hope that a first-of-its-kind project in the Nashville area will help them better understand, among other things, why phantom traffic jams occur and how to prevent them. If you drive, you know the situation: You’re on your way to work, to meet friends or to start a week of vacation at the beach or a cabin up in the mountains. You’re cruising along the interstate when all of a sudden you see lots of red tail lights ahead. You hit your brakes and spend the next five or so minutes sitting in traffic, slowly inching forward. And just as suddenly as you stopped, the traffic breaks up and you are on your way again. According to researchers in Tennessee, these “phantom traffic jams”—slowdowns caused by driver behavior rather than a crash or other obstruction—are far more common than many people realize. It’s one lesson traffic engineers have learned from a new “test bed” of high-definition cameras placed along a highly congested stretch of freeway in the Nashville area. By studying the data, researchers at Vanderbilt University are unlocking crucial information about how drivers affect the flow of traffic in their interaction with each other, with traffic laws and with the environment.
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