this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2026
260 points (96.8% liked)

Fuck Cars

15569 readers
1235 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
toaster@slrpnk.net
grue@lemmy.world
Toaster1@lemmy.world
260
Overtaking and going fast in urban areas is not only dangerous, but also useless: a mathematical demonstration (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by lgsp@feddit.it to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
44 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Those who use the bike know this very well: in the city, speeding motorists overtaking other cars, only get one thing: they arrive first to the next red.

With a simple model, the author estimated the probability that one car that overtakes another, will then be reached again at a later red light. Then he estimated the probability that the same thing will happen when there are multiple successive traffic lights, as usual in the cities.

The result is that as fast as an aggressive driver goes, the presence of multiple traffic lights makes it virtually certain that a slower driver will catch up

So, if someone aggressively overcomes you, when you reach him at the next traffic light, you can tell him that it is mathematically proven that he/she is an idiot.

In addition, this study has implications for the 30 km/h city, demonstrating how in urban areas the traffic lights determine the travel times, not the maximum speed reachable between one traffic light and the next.

The original scientific article is here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article/13/4/260310/481212/The-Voorhees-law-of-traffic-a-stochastic-model

crossposted from: https://poliversity.it/users/rivoluzioneurbanamobilita/statuses/116419204210303856

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I would rather be behind than in front of a dangerous driver.

[–] PapaStevesy@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

There are different kinds of dangerous drivers. The kinds you don't want behind you are usually either easy to pass and leave far behind or easy to let pass you. My whole premise is based around the first kind, that is driving negligently slower than the flow of traffic. Anyone staying behind them (read: you) would then also be driving negligently. Since they're, as established, going way too slow, they are very easy to pass and get plenty of distance between without adding an extra hour onto my and every other driver's commute.

As explained elsewhere in these replies, the biggest fear from being in front of this kind of driver is being directly in front of them and getting rear-ended at a stop when they're not paying attention, but if I can overtake them, that means I can just stay in a different lane from them and there's no real concern.