One of the big causes of traffic is that cars and trucks are travelling at different speeds relative to each other. This creates minor slowdowns that have consequences for cars up to a mile behind. How can we get people to get on the same page and travel at the same speed? I think the solution is a in-dash guage like a speedometer that measures your relative speed to cars around you. It would basically be like the temperature guage - you can see how much “hotter” or “cooler” you are compared to drivers around you. The “hotter” your guage, the faster you’re driving compared to your neighbors. The “cooler” your guage, the slower you’re driving relative to the flow of traffic. This would help slow and elderly drivers be more mindful of staying in sync with the adjacent traffic flow. It would also subconsciously influence more aggressive drivers to stay in harmony.

I think this would improve traffic flow and reduce accidents because there would be less surprising speed changes. And this has a positive-feedback element - the less accidents, the better the flow of traffic.

Or maybe I’m just tired from rehearsal and need some sugar. I can’t tell if this is asinine or brilliant.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 12:58 am and is filed under ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.