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The stop-and-go waves are generated by very small events at the level of individual vehicles. In certain situations a tipping point is reached that magnifies small effects to create large changes that can involve hundreds of vehicles and which may be a couple of miles long.
Eddie Wilson
This Easter, motorists will experience the familiar frustration of being stuck on a motorway in a 'phantom' traffic jam that eventually disperses with no road works to blame, or any other apparent cause. Research at the University of Bristol has investigated this problem and found that although most changes in vehicle speed and road position get absorbed by traffic flow, they sometimes combine in a 'perfect storm' to create these phantom jams. In busy conditions the action of just one driver crossing from one lane to another is enough to cause a ripple which can magnify into a wave of traffic chaos. The resulting queues are like waves which move against the traffic flow, slowing it down to a standstill in places. Understanding why this happens is being studied in a project led by Dr Eddie Wilson who is developing mathematical models for describing these phantom traffic jams, or stop-and-go waves, in motorway traffic. Dr Wilson says: ?The stop-and-go waves are generated by very small events at the level of individual vehicles. In certain situations a tipping point is reached that magnifies small effects to create large changes that can involve hundreds of vehicles and which may be a couple of miles long.
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