Highway Emergency Pace Car Patrol
From SusoSight
| Number: | 107 |
| Date created: | 2004-03-03 15:27:12 |
| Previous Thought: | In any situation, think of who your target audience is. |
| Next Thought: | You are addicted to speeding... |
| Voting results: | Good idea: 6 |
Over the weekend, we went on a trip to Birmingham. On the return trip, somewhere in the middle of Kentucky, all the cars on the highway got held up by something. For 15 minutes, all the traffic on I-65 north was held up. Thousands upon thousands of cars all stopped in the same strech of 1 or 2 mile road. Once traffic started back up again, people were all crowded together, plus most of them were trying to make up for lost time. Hundreds of trucks started barrelling down on cars, only thinking about themselves and not realizing that they might cause another accident.
So it led me to think that maybe what our highways need is some kind of emergency traffic pacing system. By pacing, I mean a way to keep cars going at the same speed. When a traffic slow down occurs, cars that were previously spaced out over several miles, become compacted into a mile or two long segment. A pacing system would space that traffic back out again.
One implimentation of a pacing system would be to have a team of volunteer drivers (maybe about 16 of them) be called upon during such a time. While traffic is stopped, they would drive to equidistant positions. At each position, there would be one pace car for each lane. When traffic moves again, those cars would block traffic from passing them and keep traffic more evenly spaced. THis is, until traffic is back to it's normal configuration.
External links
- TRAFFIC WAVES - William Beaty, Jan. 1998