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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Frank Filz writes:
> Steven Lane wrote:
> I'd also ask how many other vehicles were involved. A Scottish fellow I
> worked with a few years back was always telling stories of accidents on
> the motorways which involved hundreds of cars, I'm not sure how much was
> exaggeration, how much was compression of years of incidents, or what,
> but I feel like I've heard about as many many vehicle crashes in the UK
> from him as I've heard about in the news for the entire US (and many of
> them [in the UK] where they had to use dental records to identify all
> the casualties). Do your trucks come equipped with brakes?
I can only recall one really big crash over here from memory, and that was a
multiple pile up in fog. They had to spray numbers on the burnt out wrecks
so they could tell which was which.
>
> Why does it take so long? Because the costs aren't properly assigned. If
> the costs of the lost productivity were assigned properly, and someone
> would invent the Star Trek Phaser, I bet you'd see the cops
> disintegrating wrecks if they weren't off the road before the cop got
> there
Your quite right.
> One thing that I have become convinced about also wrto accidents and the
> traffic tie ups is that "rubbernecking" is not as big a factor in the
> tie up as we might think. My hypothesis is that the faster traffic
> travels on a road, the higher the carrying capacity of that road is. Why
> is this? Because for one thing, we don't in fact keep a distance which
> is proportional to the speed we're traveling (contrary to driver's ed),
> plus, the vehicle is a fixed length. What this means is that even a
> momentary disruption of traffic flow on a "full" highway can lead to a
> traffic tie up. Why? Well, when the traffic in the lane which is
> disrupted slows down or comes to a halt, the carrying capacity of that
> lane is instantly reduced BELOW the current load. You immediately have a
> slug of vehicles which don't fit on the road. Since they don't just
> conveniently disappear, they can easily result in a section of road
> where traffic is effectively permanently stopped. Of course this section
> of road happens to also be the lead up to an accident if that was the
> disruption, which creates the appearance that the folks are stopping to
> look, when in fact, all they're really doing is stopping because the guy
> in front stopped. There are also factors (like, "well, the guy in front
> stopped so I should also") which can also drag out the recovery from the
> disruption even of the road wasn't "full". I keep thinking of writing a
> traffic simulator to test my hypothesis, but have never sat down to do
> it.
I agree here as well. But I know rubber necking does slow the opposite
carrigeway which although clear still slows down as people try and get a
look at the carnage.
Steve
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: M6 Crash
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| (...) Even then, I'm not convinced it's actually rubber necking. I know the one time I witnessed an accident in progress on the other side of the highway, I briefly slowed down. In part, I was wondering if I should stop and render assistance, in (...) (23 years ago, 29-May-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: M6 Crash
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| (...) Well, it depends on the cargo. A few years back, a fuel truck crashed on I-95 and I think it was a couple days before they had that section of the road open again. If the accident caused serious property loss, I don't begrudge a certain amount (...) (23 years ago, 24-May-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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