Yesterday, while I was sitting in the van waiting in a backup at Dupont (stupid army train!), this question came to me.
If I’m getting ready to go somewhere on the freeway, I like to check the state DOT site for traffic problems, and to look at the cams. Unfortunately, there’s lots of places on my usual routes that don’t have much coverage.
So, I wonder what it would do to traffic overall if everybody, in every car, had access to traffic flow and camera data for almost every spot, at least every major road/freeway.
Would it make the traffic smoother? Or crazier as everybody tried squirreling around various road disturbances? (On Tuesday, there was an ignormous backup on my route…our vanpool driver is a master of traffic, so he found us the roundabout way, and we were only 20 minutes later. A colleague coming the same direction, about the same time, was nearly 2 hours late.)
Just a thought experiment. Do what it with you will….