I’ve been preaching this for so long, and no one ever listens because no one ever believes it.  So here’s proof.  This is to all you sub-intelligent drivers out there who love your brake pedal, especially when there’s absolutely no reason for you to be using it.  All my on-road escapades to help YOU off the road is all for the general safety of the public.

And now the Japanese have proven it:

“Japanese researchers recently performed the first experimental demonstration of a phenomenon that causes a busy freeway to inexplicably grind to a halt. A team from Nagoya University in Japan had volunteers drive cars around a small circular track and monitored the way ‘shockwaves’ — caused when one driver brakes — are sent back to other cars, caused jams to occur. Drivers were asked to travel at 30 kmph but small fluctuations soon appeared, eventually causing several vehicles to stop completely. Understanding the phenomenon could help devise ways to avoid the problem. As one researcher comments: ‘If they had set up an experiment with robots driving in a perfect circle, flow breakdown would not have occurred.”

http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13402-shockwave-traffic-jam-recreated-for-first-time.html

So the next time you’re on the road and you want to touch your brake pedal when there’s nothing in front of you, remember this: you’re about to singlehandedly cause a traffic jam.