Why bad weather makes us bad drivers

Am traffic crawling through the Sunset Road viaduct, going to the city of Auckland during heavy rains and storms on Friday.
Photo: RNZ/ NICK MONRO

Half of all passengers change to cars on rainy days, but as we react creates continuous ripple effects that add up to even greater slowdown, says traffic engineer Doug Wilson.

In the last 24 hours, many areas have been hit by heavy rains and storms as a climate system described as an ‘atmospheric river’ crossed the country, with Tasman, Auckland and Northland with the weight.

Even without the stormy time, looking at the stop -choques of the car in front of you while waiting to start working or back home is a daily reality for many of us – but add some rain to the mixture, and the route can quickly turn back into a snail sketch.

Or does it seem like this?

Apparently not. To start, up to 50 % more people move to cars to move when it rains, Doug Wilson, an associate professor at Auckland University, said Doug Wilson Verification point.

People who can usually walk, pedal or use public transport change to cars when it rains, because it becomes more convenient, he said. And this additional volume of vehicles acts as a key key in the works.

“Our transportation systems and user behaviors depend on what we call ideal conditions – the ability reduces as we move away from these ideal conditions,” said Wilson.

“… adverse climate is a good example of adverse conditions that affect the ability of our transportation systems. Therefore, changes in human behavior, people are concerned about the climate, so that they take more time after distances, they can brake more carefully than if they are in dry conditions – so that it affects capacity and safety.”

The behavior of each person in response to the risk is different, which creates a mixture of different road -driving patterns.

“The more variation you get among drivers – which are human that really maintains this system in balance – the greater the difficulties it creates for the system’s capacity during those times of variance,” he said.

“Some drivers will be more cautious than others, others will follow much more closely. No matter how time is, others think … ‘I need to be more careful here.'”

Wilson said there were bad drivers around the world, but speed was a particular problem with New Zealand drivers.

Bad behaviors were also dynamic and changeable in different situations.

“As if we had a long dry period, the first period of rain we forgot, we forget some of these behaviors we learned during the winter, for example, then, at the end of a summer, usually our behaviors are worse for the first period of rain,” Wilson said.

“We are not robots, we are not consistent. We all make mistakes toward us. Most of them do not end up being an incident or an accident that really occurs, but obviously these behaviors are difficult to manage because we are not robots.”

Notices for Auckland drivers in the morning at Friday’s storm.
Photo: RNZ/ NICK MONRO

Picty points can occur on roads in places where some people see more risks, and drivers slowing can cause a ripple effect below through traffic flow and form lines that take time to resolve.

“You can see that when you get rubber people with an incident occurring, it creates an effect on the other side of the highway, because people are looking and taking the sight of what they should be, which they are driving and keeping consistent. Therefore, it creates a problem on both sides of the highway, even if it is not a problem that side,” Wilson said.

Even after clear adverse weather conditions, ‘shock waves’ in traffic standards can still remain for one or two hours later, he said.

But time was just one of many variables that contributed to traffic standards. Although experts can use modeling and algorithms to try to predict traffic flow, they calculate mainly for ideal situations, while real -life standards were a “very dynamic situation.”

Although autonomous autonomous cars do not offer an immediate solution to remove complexity, removing the factor of human variation, Wilson said. This is because any change towards new technology means a transitional period, with a mix of human drivers and automated vehicles together sharing the roads – creating even more variation between different driving behaviors.

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