How to Hack Stop and Go Traffic in your Favor

I did this, this morning on the Beltway going towards Silver Spring and it seemed to work. The technique works like this: if you're in stop and go traffic, don't follow behind the car in front of you blindly (e.g. less than one car length gap in front of you and the next car-- what's wrong with you? wanna be in a fender-bender? relax and hang back...), you increase the gap to two or three and try to maintain that. Yes, you'll be traveling a little bit slower than the rest of the traffic, but that's okay. What will happen in a few minutes is the rest of the traffic will thin out in front of you and there will be greedy impatient drivers thinking that they can "get ahead" by switching to your lane. When you see a mass migration of impatient drivers into your "bubbled" lane-- switch to their lane. Lather, rinse, repeat. You'll be systematically creating a bubble of better traffic in your lane, all you have to do is get into the habit of not following too close when in the sprawl and crawl.



How to Hack Stop and Go Traffic in your Favor