More Traffic

It's more fun traffic facts from the book Traffic. So let's get right to it.

1. Statistically, the most dangerous roads are rural two-lane highways.
2. Studying data, a study of 43,000 hours of data showed almost 80% of crashes and 65% of near crashes involved drivers who were not paying attention to traffic for up to three seconds before the event.
3. The San Diego Freeway, I-405, was designed to carry 160,000 vehicles a day. It now carries almost 400,000 vehicles a day.
4. Where the San Diego Freeway joins the Santa Monica Freeway is the most congested in the U.S.
5. Engineers says that for every minute a highway lane is blocked, an additional four to five minutes of delay are generated.
6. Traffic engineers are increasingly lengthening the "ll-red phase," meaning that when one direction gets the red, the competing direction has to wait nearly two seconds before getting a green. They do this because more people cannot seem to stop on red. (I hated the red light runners before, now even more.)
7. The average amount of daily drive time world-wide is 1.1 hours per day.
8. Studies show that satisfaction with one's commute begins to drop off at around 30 minutes each way.
9. One reason roads are more crowded - In 1950 women made up 28% of the workforce. Now it is 48%. That is a lot more total driving.
10. If you go to Wal-Mart should you just pick a row and park in the closest spot in that row. Or should you circle the lot looking for the closest possible spot. It turns out its a tie.