Traffic Jams and Chicken Soup

It is not unusual while driving to work (or anywhere) to get stuck in heavy freeway traffic. Cars inch along for miles, bumper to bumper, then sud-denly the tie-up disappears as mysteriously as it began. If there had been an accident, a lane closure or some other identifiable cause, the jam would have made sense. But why, we have long wondered, does traffic grind to a halt for no reason?

Wonder no more. This very question (along with its corollary--what causes the traffic to clear?) is addressed in a new book, “Imponderables: The Solutions to the Mysteries of Everyday Life,” by David Feldman (Morrow). According to Feldman, when freeway traffic is heavy, some timid drivers slow down, and this sends a shock wave through all the cars behind.

“Drivers look for the reason they had to slow down in the first place,” Feldman says. “They overreact to any stimuli, particularly the brake lights of the cars ahead of them. A few slow drivers, at 25 m.p.h., can set off a shock-wave effect for miles behind them.” Ultimately there is enough open road in front of the original slowpokes to cause them to resume normal speed, and the traffic jam evaporates.

Feldman does not give the source of this wisdom, but we are prepared to believe it anyway. Doing so gives credence to his answers to other long-puzzling questions, such as “Why, despite the television and radio announcers’ assurance that ‘for the next 60 seconds we will be conducting a test of the emergency broadcast system,’ does the test take less than 60 seconds?” and “Where do they get that awful music for ice skating?”

On a scale of 1 to a million, life’s little mysteries hardly make it to 1, but it’s good to know that somebody is addressing them. Since the worldis unable to answer the Big Questions, it makes sense to look at the little ones. Like chicken soup, it couldn’t hurt.