Jerks help traffic move faster and keep jams from happening, study finds

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Green light, and right away my tach surges toward the redline. I keep my foot planted, sending me a fair amount over the speed limit before I even make it off the on-ramp. Smooth sailing for another 100 yards or so because the lane ends ahead. The sheep to my left merged about a mile ago, leaving beautiful, useful, open asphalt in front of me. I drive all the way to the end, then a quick lane change or two, and I’m on my way. Someone is calling me a jerk or some other insult for sure, but I can’t hear him. He’s all the way back there.

People have been calling us -- the speeders, darters and sudden lane changers who aggressively move through traffic -- all kinds of names over the years: jerk, psycho and, my personal favorite, gas waster. But who knew? We just might be ... good for traffic.

A new study released in Physical Journal E (a bunch of eggheads who study various forms of complicated physics) has found that traffic flows best when about 40% of drivers are breaking the rules of the road. This tends to help break up traffic and keep jams from happening.

‘The interesting finding is that if most of the people are law-abiding, and you have a certain amount of people who are breaking the rule, then you are actually getting the minimum chance of a [traffic] jam,’ said Petter Minnhagen, the physicist at Sweden’s Umea University who authored the paper.

The study was done by computer model. One group of people was placed on a board where they had to obey certain rules, and they were mixed with people who didn’t follow the same rules. At first, the rule breakers caused more congestion, but after adding more rule breakers, traffic started to improve.

Not all traffic rules are meant to be broken though; for example, tailgating bunches traffic up and causes traffic jams, previous studies have found.

So the next time someone driving faster than you passes you on the right, just remember: That jerk just might be doing you a favor.

-- J. Mark Sternberg

Source: Article on physicscentral.com: ‘Jerks actually reduce the risk of traffic jams’

Traffic flows best when about 40% of drivers are breaking the rules of the road, a study has found. Credit: Richard Hartog / Los Angeles Times