Math Says You're Driving Wrong and It's Slowing Us All Down

You know, that thing where the flow suddenly slows to a halt and you inch forward for a half hour and then things pick up again and you look around for an accident or construction or anything at all for Pete's sake that might justify the time you just wasted. It's as if the fates chose this particular time and place to screw with you. That may seem counterintuitive, since you don't have much control over how far you are from the car behind you--especially when that person is a tailgater. But the math says that if everyone kept an equal distance between the cars ahead and behind, all spaced out in a more orderly fashion, traffic would move almost twice as quickly. Now sure, you're probably not going to convince everyone on the road to do that.