re: Why does traffic on interstates ever come to a stop?

Every morning I get on I-12 West and have to force my way into the left lane because the I-10 East off-ramp is coming up on the right, causing the right and middle lanes to come to a stop.

Of course the right lane should stop, if there is heavy traffic moving to I-10. But the middle lane stops due to the morons who wait till the last second to get in the right lane. Even the left lane slows down, sometimes to a stop, because some idiot realizes he's on the wrong side of the interstate for his exit, or just because the other two lanes have stopped and they think that means they should cautiously slow down to a crawl.

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Qualcomm you mean? They're getting out of the elog biz last I heard. Peoplenet is the big provider now.

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Yeah you old school cause you got that.

Actually Qualcomm sold off that division in '13. Which was their orginal division, and Qualcomm wouldnt exist without it. So another reason to thank the trucking industry.

The new company is called Omnitracs (after the first Qualcomm product name I believe). They are still the bigger player though, with Peoplenet for ELDs. Those 2 own the market with the big boys still. Lots of new little players though, but probably fizzle eventually. Lots of freaking data to manage.

So you/your company use Peoplenet? Thoughts on the eld mandate now that it's a year-ish in?

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Zipper merge maximizes the capacity of the road.

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Zipper merge causes slower flowrate through a choke point.

The length of the traffic line may be shorter, but it will definitely take longer to get everyone through the choke as opposed to if they'd had just lined up when they first saw traffic stacking and moved through as a single unit.

Most interstate highways don't have traffic.

The word "traffic" implies movement.

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dealing with people merging onto an interstate at 35 mph

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This is one of the things I never understand about people. I make sure I’m at least up to 60 mph when I’m on the ramp that merges onto the interstate. I hate being stuck behind people who go 35-40mph to merge onto the interstate. It isn’t safe and it fricks up everything for people on the interstate

Yeah makes sense for sure. New tech potential in the industry going to help there....if done right and catches on.

Trucking companies need the ability to push these DCs to do so. Which they havent been able to get done.

Because of speeding.
A person who is speeding who comes up on slower traffic has to brake harder than one who is not speeding. The harder stopping causes the person behind them to brake harder and this continues going back until someone has to come to a complete stop. Then everyone behind them has to come to a complete stop.

I've always wondered why it takes so long to get going at a green light. I seems that if everyone hit the gas as soon as the light turns green they could all go but that doesn't even come close to happening in real life. I guess it has to do with the light having to travel the extra distance to reach the cars further back?

agreed, there is a 5 mile stretch of I-12 between hammond and slidell that goes from 80mph to complete stop as traffic merges into it every single day regardless of what day it is.

for no frickin reason at all no cops doing radar, no break downs, no accidents, no hot woman standing on side of road broken down, just complete halt to forward motion because 50 people in front of you come to a complete stop for no reason other then 50 people in front of them come to a complete stop for no frickin reason and 50 people in front of them come to a complete stop for no frickin reason.

once you pass this stretch its instantly 80 mph traffic flow again as you wonder why you spent 30 minutes of your day idling for the last 5 miles