Traffic Congestion Psychology

Traffic and Psychology: Is Drivers’ Mind Causing Traffic Congestion?

Have you ever encounter a traffic congestion when you feel like there is no reason for it? Severe traffic congestions are found in many well-developed cities like London, New York, Beijing, etc. Traffic jam is very serious despite the numbers of cars, motorbikes, and other vehicles are under management, and road construction and traffic regulations are planned. Poor management of the traffic system may be one of reasons, however, the drivers’ minds are also one of the crucial reason of the traffic congestions as these psychological factors affects driver’s behaviour and may lead to traffic accidents. Driving behaviours can cause traffic congestion; they originated from drivers’

Some may choose to accelerate and drive fast until they have to brake because of the red light or an intention to avoid crashing into the car in front of him or her. Personality and other psychological factors shape the drivers’ habits and behaviours. There are mainly two driving behaviours that cause traffic congestions. The first behaviour is braking, or any kind of rapid variation of speed. Braking or a sudden deceleration contributes a lot to the traffic jam due to a phenomena called ‘jamiton’. In this phenomena, braking of a single car can cause the braking of the following car as the following car have to slow down or brake in order to prevent collision. This causes a ‘chain reaction’. The braking is then passed along the road and slow down the speed of vehicles and thus the traffic flow in total. This portion of traffic jam is called as ‘phantom traffic jam’. According to Kowszun(2013), ‘jamition’ can be caused by any ‘sudden change of speed’ and is a characteristic of ‘any large moving body of traffic’. This is not a problem or phenomena occurring in any particular city; it can occur in any place once there is a big traffic body with ‘drivers have less-than-perfect skills’. This is not only related to the drivers’ skills, but also their personalities. Any kind of psychological factors that led to sudden deceleration or braking can cause traffic

There is one crucial point in the argument of this essay: psychological factors participant in the traffic congestion – it does not imply that physical factors are excluded from the reason of traffic jam; both kinds of factors are play a important role in the causation of the traffic flow and thus traffic congestion. Moreover, the traffic condition can be very different even if all the physical factors are constant as the traffic condition also depends on how the users(mainly drivers) use the road. There are study done investigating how the behaviours affect the traffic condition. It is indicated that the traffic condition varies a lot if the behaviours of drivers change even if the physical factors like numbers of cars remain constant. Physical factors like number of vehicles, length of road are not the only factors in the investigation of traffic congestion; psychological factors are also under research and have a very important role in the traffic flow and traffic