Traffic continues to be a nightmare, especially for people living in metropolitan areas. The traffic problem, which sometimes takes the 15-minute journey to 1 hour, is one of the biggest problems of our daily lives as the population in metropolitan cities and the number of vehicles on the roads increase day by day.
When we come across heavy traffic hours or due to an accident in front of us, the traffic comes to a standstill at some moments. There are many reasons that can cause traffic jams. Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, also made statements that the traffic will increase day by day with the increase in technology. Let’s take a look at Elon Musk’s explanations and situations that can cause traffic jams…
Elon Musk admits that autonomous vehicles will increase traffic
Vehicle technology, continues to evolve day by day. With this developing technology, cars can now drive on their own without the need for us. Experts almost agree that this technology will make traffic a bigger problem. Elon Musk has recently announced that he surprisingly agrees with this view. Elon Musk stated that after the ‘traffic jam’ videos coming from the tunnels he invented to solve the traffic problem in the past days, no one can find a solution to the traffic problem and this problem will increase gradually. According to Elon Musk, self-driving ‘autonomous vehicles’ will both increase traffic and be a solution to some problems.
Many people just drive to get from point A to point B, rather than enjoy driving. Vehicles with autonomous driving technology, on the other hand, make the journey more enjoyable by minimizing the physical effort of the drivers. People can now take long journeys with almost no fatigue with autonomous driving technology. According to Elon Musk, with the widespread use of autonomous vehicles in the near future, the number of vehicles on the roads will increase and traffic will become a much bigger problem. Although this situation may seem annoying, autonomous vehicles are expected to greatly reduce the ‘ghost traffic’ problem that we often encounter in traffic.
So what is ghost traffic?
Sometimes even if there is no problem in traffic, vehicles may suddenly slow down and traffic may come to a standstill. The most common reason for this is the so-called ‘ghost traffic jam’. Ghost traffic; It is usually caused by the sudden inattention of the drivers when there are heavy vehicles in traffic, not seeing the vehicle in front slowing down. Unfortunately, we often experience this situation in our daily lives, although many of us are not aware of it. Reasons such as late braking, driver carelessness or excessive speed can cause this problem. At this point, autonomous vehicles that continue their journey by calculating the speed of the vehicle in front can greatly reduce the problem of ghost traffic. In the video below, you can see how all traffic is affected by the sudden deceleration of a driver, just like the domino effect.
This is how a driver’s sudden braking affects all traffic:
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