Why is there a traffic jam?

Today to talk about a problem that everyone will encounter in their daily lives - traffic jams, especially rush hour, high-speed holidays, traffic jams, presumably sometimes irritable, sometimes half an hour away, encountered traffic jams, an hour has not yet arrived. Baidu proposed at the AI Developer Conference that intelligent transportation will be a major technology that will affect the next 10 to 40 years, and Robin Li (founder of Baidu) believes that this technology can make China's large cities do not need to restrict the purchase of cars within 5 years, and can solve the problem of traffic jams within 10 years. But why is the traffic jam happening?

There are more and more cars

This is also a direct reason, such as a school, more and more students in the school, then going to the playground in the morning to do broadcast gymnastics is definitely more and more congested, the time spent is getting longer and longer, in 2010 the national car ownership was 0.91 billion, by 2020 the national car ownership has exceeded 281 million, nearly tripled. Taking Shanghai, a first-tier city in China, as an example, the number of cars in Shanghai was 1.7025 million in 2010, and by 2020, the number of cars in Shanghai has exceeded 4.4 million, which is still growing in shanghai in the case of the launch of the monthly car license auction system. The number of cars is increasing, but the city is so big, especially in the morning and evening rush hours, everyone rushes to travel time, more and more blocked can be understood.

People's driving levels and habits vary

Each driver's driving level is different, driving habits are not the same, the degree of concentration is not the same, such as and the safety distance of the front car each driver definition is not the same, for a simple example, when the traffic light, the first car is focused, immediately started, but the second car feels that it is not to the safe distance, wait for 3 seconds and then start, the third car is more prudent to drive, wait for 7 seconds to start, wait for twenty cars may have been delayed for 5 minutes, it will form a traffic jam point, and if the distance between the two intersections is not long enough , may also spread to the next intersection. In addition, the driver's driving habits are different, there is bound to be a change of lanes, congestion situation, such as disgusted with the slow driving of the previous car, I decided to change lanes to overtake and then change back, but this action may lead to the overtake of the vehicle has a braking action, and interfere with the normal operation of the next lane, it is likely to cause the traffic that may have been chaotic to cause new traffic jams.

The road environment is complex

Urban roads are complex and changeable, such as four lanes over an intersection into three lanes, straight lanes open to become turn lanes, the roadside suddenly burst out of a red light electric car, the road ahead is under construction, etc., any one of these factors will lead to brake changes, these two actions will affect the rear car, in the peak period is easy to cause traffic jams, in addition, different cities due to historical reasons, many urban roads are not as square as Beijing, straight and straight, and supplemented by tunnel elevated to alleviate traffic pressure, There will be all kinds of small roads, large roads are staggered, there are no elevated tunnels, so that the complexity of the road is further increased, and it is more likely to lead to congestion.

How to solve congestion?

Starting from the first problem to solve is not very realistic, the automotive industry as a high-tech industry, the mainland is not easy to reach the world's forefront level in the new energy automobile industry, the country can not hope to reduce the car to achieve congestion, in addition, the vigorous development of the automotive industry on consumption, employment also has a good driving effect, if from the reduction of cars to solve congestion, there is a problem of putting the cart before the horse.

The second problem can indeed be alleviated by automatic driving, Baidu in this conference to focus on solving this is this, each car driving habits are consistent, the speed is reached to the ideal state, plan the trip in advance, will not be stopped without reason, it does help to alleviate traffic congestion, but it is not realistic to want to be completely free of congestion, giving people the feeling of being more orderly, or learning radio exercises as an example, if the whole school starts to do radio exercises in the morning, the school will play music first, let the low floors enter first, and enter after the high floors. Everyone's entry speed must not be fast, but it is not slow, and after the popularization of automatic driving, it gives people more of this feeling, because the ownership of cars and travel needs are placed there.

Third, we can start from simplifying the road environment, so how to simplify it? In fact, major national cities are also doing, build more elevated, tunnels, highways, if a road condition is simple, there is no traffic lights, but also to a large extent to alleviate congestion, such as Musk's "anti-traffic tunnel", but also from the simplification of the road environment to solve congestion.

Traffic jam is a world problem, once China's Beijing-Tibet Expressway has been jammed for more than 100 kilometers, blocked for more than nine days, if the future automatic driving popularization can reduce the accident rate and alleviate the traffic jam, why not a good thing?