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This is an article explaining that one driver can prevent a traffic jam.

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This is an article explaining that one driver can prevent a traffic jam.

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This is a secondary source because the article is explaining how one driver can prevent traffic jams not all drivers.

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One driver can prevent a traffic jam. There is a growing body of research finding that by preventing bottlenecks and maintaining a steady speed, a driver can ease traffic.

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Traffic incidents 25% of total congestion. Work zones 15% of total congestion. Bad weather 10% of total congestion. Poor signal timing 5% of total congestion.

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This is a scientific article for why traffic occurs.

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This is a scientific article for why traffic occurs.

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This is a secondary source because the scientific reason is not a reason explained by a professional.

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For something experienced by most drivers on a fairly regular basis, traffic is often misunderstood. Sure most people know that things like lane closures and bad weather cause traffic, but they probably don't realize their driving habits also contribute to significant congestion.

That's the crux of this video from AsapSCIENCE, which explains how pockets of traffic form out of nowhere and how drivers can prevent this congestion from taking place. The main issue is that drivers tend not to keep a constant speed unless using cruise control, and these gradual fluctuations cause other drivers to slow down, creating bottlenecks.

This video explains it beautifully, and offers some methods for driving in a way that limits this sort of congestion. Now we just need to get everyone to watch this video so we get rid of as much traffic as possible.

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Here's a Scientific Explanation For Why Traffic Happens

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For something experienced by most drivers on a fairly regular basis, traffic is often misunderstood. Sure most people know that things like lane closures and bad weather cause traffic, but they probably don't realize their driving habits also contribute to significant congestion.

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This is an article explaining why traffic is getting worse in Houston

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This is an article explaining why traffic is getting worse in Houston

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This is a secondary source because the article doesn't explain an historical event.

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Texas' population grew by almost 60 percent since 1990, adding 10 million residents at the fastest rate in the nation. All those new folks bring their automobiles, and day after day we're trying to cram more and more cars onto our roadways, bringing traffic through important arteries of commerce to a near standstill daily.

But looking ahead, things could get even worse. The state demographer projected Texas population will double by 2050 -so are we prepared to double the capacity of our transportation infrastructure, or will our cities stall in unbreakable gridlock? One research group is sounding the alarm.

"The current highway system is already inadequate," said Carolyn Kelly, co-author of a recent report on the Texas highway system. "Texas will need massive upgrade projects, otherwise you could be looking at a transportation system that's increasingly congested and doesn't support the growth of the state."

Kelly and others worked on behalf of TRIP, a national transportation research group, to mine data from the Texas Department of Transportation and produce a prioritized list of major upgrade projects in major cities across the Lone Star State. The project plans belong to TXDOT, but the priorities are the work of TRIP, based on how badly improvements are needed and how easily improvements could be implemented.

Houston has an exceptionally deep reliance on its roadways; past research by the Center for Houston's Future found that the city's population swells by over 30 percent daily, as about 600,000 people drive into the city for work every day. Almost half of city workers spend more than an hour commuting each day.
RELATED: 21 facts about Houston you probably didn't know
Research abounds with insight into the detrimental effects of traffic congestion. It stalls business efficiency, elongating transport times for goods and forcing workers to spend more time being idle and unproductive behind the wheel.

It also induces anxiety, a feeling that can take years off of commuters' lives when experienced on a daily basis. Tiny cancer-causing particles wafting out of exhaust pipes make their ways into commuters' lungs amidst regular gridlocks of thousands of vehicles. The general air quality also suffers; more traffic means each vehicle spends more time on the road, spewing noxious fumes into the city ambiance.

TRIP recommended 100 upgrade projects for Texas and 15 for Houston, but they come with a hefty price tag. The group's most highly-recommended work for Houston, an expansion of Interstate 45 from the city's center to near its southern edge, is priced at $6.7 billion. To put that in perspective, statewide voters passed a $1.7 billion transportation spending plan to upgrade infrastructure.
RELATED: TxDOT unveils spending plan for Prop. 1 money
"These projects and many others will remain standing on the drawing board unless Texas can provide added transportation funding at the state and local levels," Kelly said.

She said improving roadways alone won't be enough to stem Texas' mounting transportation problems, and a well-balanced approach will include upgrades to public transportation. Significant efforts currently in the works include high-speed rails lines linking Dallas and Houston and San Antonio and Austin (which Forbes ranked the nation's 4th-most congested city in 2014).

But the TRIP focused exclusively on highways, not public transportation.
Check out our slideshow to see the 15 top recommended upgrade projects to Houston highways.

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Houston traffic is horrible and about to get a lot worse (unless we do this)

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Texas' population grew by almost 60 percent since 1990, adding ten million residents at the fastest rate in the nation. All those new folks bring their automobiles, and day after day we're trying to cram more and more cars onto our roadways, bringing traffic through important arteries of commerce to a near standstill daily.

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This is a picture of construction traffic.

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This is a picture of construction traffic.

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This is a secondary source because the picture doesn't fully explain anything.

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This is an article explaining why there is so much traffic.

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This is an article explaining why there is so much traffic.

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This is a secondary source because the article might have facts that are not true.

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Shutterstock

Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic, gave a great 20-minute overview on the counterintuitive science of congestion at the Boing Boing: Ingenuity conference in San Francisco last month. Turns out a lot of the problems we ascribe to poor roads or other drivers are really our own fault. "[T]he individual driver cannot often understand the larger traffic system," says Vanderbilt.

The talk is worth a full watch - especially if you're parked in gridlock - but we've plucked out a few nuggets most relevant to metro area commuters.

Executing the "zipper" merge. Road work often reduces two lanes of traffic down to one. In these situations, American drivers typically merge into the right lane as soon as possible and form one long line. The main reason they do this is because people think it's bad behavior to stay in the left lane and merge late.

In fact, says Vanderbilt, traffic would be much better off if cars stayed in both lanes then merged at the very end, one by one, like a zipper. It's safer (fewer lane changes), it reduces back-ups (often up to 40 percent), and it quenches road rage ( still on the rise).

The zipper merge is used in Germany but can't overcome its bad reputation in the United States. A trial in Minnesota failed because drivers wouldn't stay to the left. They were too nice.

Maintaining a steady speed. A big reason for traffic is that too many cars are trying to occupy too little space on the road. But that's not the only problem. A human inability to maintain a steady speed and following distance on the highway makes traffic a lot less smooth than it could be.

A few years back a group of Japanese physicists gathered drivers on a closed loop course and asked them to keep a certain speed and following distance. They couldn't do it. After a while the system broke down and a reverse shockwave rippled back through the whole line of cars.

"You're not driving into a traffic jam," says Vanderbilt. "A traffic jam is basically driving into you." He thinks autonomous cars will reduce this problem considerably.

Getting drivers onto transit. So relatively small flaws in driving behavior have a major impact on congestion. But the biggest problem may be that people just can't seem to give up driving, no matter how much they hate traffic. (This irrational bias toward driving has recently been called the "car effect.")

"You can't just assume that as bad as traffic gets that people are automatically going to migrate to mass transportation," says Vanderbilt.

That's too bad, he says, because even a small drop in driving would improve congestion dramatically. One recent study of metropolitan Boston found that getting 1 percent of commuters off the road would enable the rest to get home 18 percent faster. Vanderbilt ends his science of traffic talk without suggesting ways to target this 1 percent. Fortunately there's also a science of mass transit on the case.

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A Fantastically Clear, Concise Explanation of Why Traffic Happens

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Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic, gave a great 20-minute overview on the counterintuitive science of congestion at the Boing Boing: Ingenuity conference in San Francisco last month. Turns out a lot of the problems we ascribe to poor roads or other drivers are really our own fault.

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This is a video explaining how to avoid being in a car crash.

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This is a video explaining how to avoid being in a car crash.

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This is a primary source because the was made by the smarter driver so that means all the facts are true

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Smarter Driver: Tips for avoiding a rear-end crash

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You might be able to prevent a rear-end crash if you apply a little technique to how you handle following distance.

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This is a video explaining what causes traffic.

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This is a video explaining what causes traffic.

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This is a primary source because the video give specific reasons of what causes traffic.

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What Causes Traffic Jams? - Instant Egghead #29

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It's happened to all of us: we're cruising down the freeway and suddenly find ourselves stuck in a thick jam of other cars. Where did they come from? What caused the traffic mess? Scientific American editor Larry Greenemeier explains.

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This is a picture a traffic in rush hour

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This is a picture a traffic in rush hour

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This a primary source because this rush hour/traffic jam actually happened

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This is a video explaining why there is so much traffic.

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This is a video explaining why there is so much traffic.

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This is a primary source because the video is giving actual facts about why there is so much traffic.

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Traffic Has a Perfect Solution. Humans Won't Use It.