ALT-1 Traffic on the Roads and Links to the Chaos Theory
You are at a dead stop in your car. The rage fills inside of you while you continue to wait for traffic to start moving again. Has it really been ten minutes since you last moved? Gazing into your review mirror you see the frustration expressed on the driver's face behind you. Ahead, the man in his Lexus has found a way to past the time by hitting his head into his own steering wheel. If only you had thought of that first you think to yourself.
Believe or not but in our society we have all experienced this feeling. We all have a common connection and it is Chaos Theory! Chaos theory summed up is the idea that a system can be affected by the initial conditions which influence the outcome of that system. Traffic is a by product of our transportation system that we have in place. The example we used above can have many particular reasons why traffic was presented. We shall explore just one creative example on how traffic has been induced in this particular system.
Let us say you were traveling to a sporting event. Everything on the highway was going smoothly one hour before you set out from your home. That was until there was a minor accident. A pick up truck was hauling some furniture and due to the speed, wind pressure, or whatever factors we want to include in our system the furniture flipped out and settled on the freeway. This event caused a chain of events on our system. Everyone who was driving by or behind the driver had to make changes in order to respond to the environment. They had to swerve or slow down. They had to pull over, and even some of them ran into the debris.
What has occurred in our system after the accident is that the system had experienced change. Eventually the changed system will overlap into your system. The two occurrences, the truck accident and you leaving your home to go to the event, are both influenced by one another. The accident caused you to stop in dead traffic and you had to react due to the accident. We will call your approach towards the accident a vector. Not only has the accident influence your vector, but it also had influenced others that were traveling on the road up to the point of the initial accident occurrence. In chaos theory, we would refer to this type of system as a dynamical one, because of the mixing or combining of victors.
The dynamics of traffic and how you play a role should be invigorating. Based on chaos theory, humans play a role in other humans lives all the time. This idea should be captivating and empowering at the same time. So the next time when you are stuck in traffic and you feel that you are going to charge out of your car, and yell out at the top of your lungs in anguish, just remember one thing. Mathematically, you are not alone.
