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Oh dear...even allowing for the speeded up footage, a couple of those manoeuvres had me wincing.
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Fascinating - like watching ants.
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Yep - definitely seen it on here before though.
There's one of those big (hamburger?) roundabouts near us with a road going through the middle of it and traffic lights. A few times recently the traffic lights haven't been working, they've closed the straight-through option, and it all seems to work a lot better.
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Of course it can be done, its a simple system that everyone obeys "don't hit anything"
Take away everything that makes you think you have right of way, instill the "don't hit anything" mantra and bingo
It even works with pedestrians, watch the bloke in the top crossing at 1:19 - 1:26
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You see it here when traffic lights break down. Everything works smoothly and people sort themselves out.
In Ireland once I encountered a long stretch of roadworkings with a man with a Stop/Go board at each end. They couldn't see each other and had no walkie-talkie, so just randomly turned their boards depending on whether anything was coming or not. All the traffic met in the middle and just manoeuvred past, driving across rough ground, round sites huts etc.
It's what everyone would have done any way, without any traffic control.
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Of course it can be done, its a simple system that everyone obeys "don't hit anything"
Birds do it so much more elegantly - just watch a flock of starlings. Presumably they operate by obeying a simple inbuilt set of rules otherwise they would be crashing all over the place.
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If you watch pedestrians trying to pass each other in large numbers they do sometimes bump into each other. Perhaps this arises from two causes:
1) trying to anticipate each other's movements.
2) sometimes being polite
Birds, and Ethiopeans, presumably don't suffer from either of these faults.
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>> Birds do it so much more elegantly - just watch a flock of starlings. Presumably
>> they operate by obeying a simple inbuilt set of rules otherwise they would be crashing
>> all over the place.
>>
The individual birds in a flock of starlings are all flying together at the same speed and in the same general direction, it is only minor variations in speed and variations in direction set by the leader which causes them to alter course.
Humans do it just as well, if not better. Watch a busy 2 x 4 lane motorway from an over bridge. That is also quite impressive.
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>>
>> Humans do it just as well, if not better. Watch a busy 2 x 4
>> lane motorway from an over bridge. That is also quite impressive.
>>
They have marked lanes as guidance, and only 4, not 100.
Birds are not constantly trying to overtake each other, or switch to a lane that seems to be going faster.
Humans speed up or slow down depending on what they think they can see in another carriageway.
Humans quite often pile into one another because they forget the reaction and braking distances.
After they have had a pile-up, another lot of humans arrive and close the sky while they have a long investigation to see whether anyone was guilty of a crime.
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>> its a simple system that everyone obeys "don't hit anything"
Yes, easy peasy when most if not quite all drivers are used to the system and display a measure of prudence. Been in many such places, even in Europe once or twice.
In the more backwoodsy of such places - places without complex, generally obeyed traffic control measures - drivers sometimes have a very abrupt way with anyone thought to be taking advantage and driving dangerously. They can be lynched and maimed or killed, even if no one has been hurt so far. I've seen that too, not too close up thank goodness.
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Traffic flow without controls - Westpig
