Driving on the Hard Shoulder to Cut Congestion

What a crap idea the government has had to ease congestion by allowing people to drive on the hard shoulder (see link). Have they forgotten that the hard shoulder is there for a good reason? Now, even if you’re parked on the hard shoulder for a reason that isn’t a dire emergency, you’ll certain be sucked into one when someone smacks into the back of you. Imagine how terrifying it’s going to be when you’re parked there and cars are continually driving up to you at what are clearly going to be far greater speeds than the imposed 50mph limit, and then changing lanes last minute.

Which brings me to the second reason why it’s a crap idea. Congestion is caused by traffic waves. The general idea of traffic waves goes like this:

1. Someone slows down or changes lane.
2. The person behind slows down more than necessary to compensate, chiefly because they were driving too closely and are reacting out of shock.
3. The next person behind slows down even more than that, again due to a tendency towards overcompensating, and so on.

And thus traffic slows down and gets more congested. A way of looking at another reason for congestion is this: If you increase the thickness of a wire, then its current will meet with increased resistance and power will be wasted. Similarly, if you have more lanes, the traffic won’t necessarily go faster, because people will have more of a tendency to change lanes and slow the traffic down (again due to traffic waves).

This problem will increase massively when the hard shoulder is used as a lane. All it takes is one broken down car on there, and the entire lane becomes a pile-up. Even worse, the lane to its right will become jammed as people constantly try to pull onto it to get out of the pile-up, and the lane to the right of that will become jammed for the same reasons, and so on.

Those who have broken down and need to move onto the hard shoulder as soon as possible will have a terrible time trying to find a gap. No-one will want to let you in, because they know that they’ll have to slow down or stop and change lanes. In times where there’s mass congestion, when few people are likely to let you pull into their lane, that’s the last thing you want to face.

The hard shoulder, as I’ve said, will have an official speed limit of 50mph. Why? If it’s a lane safe enough to be used as one of the other lanes – that is, if it’s wide enough and there’s no debris – then it should be used in the same way as other lanes. Otherwise, don’t use it as a normal lane.

For those using the hard shoulder and obeying the speed limit, it’s perpetually very difficult to get into the next lane due to having to pick up speed first. By the time they have, the gap (if there is one) has gone. For those disobeying the speed limit, it gets more dangerous because there might be broken down cars in front of them and there’s little time to react and stop. Either way, it’s a crap, dangerous and terrifying idea to use the hard shoulder for normal traffic.