"Traffic has memory"

Oof...all this reading is making feverish...i am being forced to think of wierd things! Was watching MI3 few days back (god knws how many times i have seen the movie...overdone...bt still watching it)...one dialouge in the movie has stuck in my mind since day one...I dont know how many of you remember it bt i think its a brilliant concept and am sure alot of research has already been done on this...another reality of life which has crept out of the textbook!

The dialouge is "Traffic has memory". Tom explains it but only in one line,leaving the uninitiated listener bewildered! Well...he definitely left me thinking!

Thinking of what this line translates into...it reminds me of the innumerable times when i am driving down a road and on seeing a huge traffic ahead (due to a roadblock or anything), i say to myself, "oh no, not again!" The brilliant part is once an alternate route has been found, the traffic automatically diverts to this new route...one roadblock interrupted the memory and the smart traffic found its own way and maintained the same through its memory!

Lets go back to the beginning...Road Block on the Ring Road..in Delhi..All those not familiar with the Delhi roads - Delhi has a Ring Road structure of road where an Inner Ring Road and Outer Ring Road encircles the entire city connecting all important places. Of course, by convention, one can know that this concepts helps in one thing...everyone knows that the shortest distance between two places on the ring road would be not via the ring road, it would be the approximate straight line joining the two places! Well, since everyone (lets say half of the traffic) would try to take this route and not the ring road, the other half will think that since most of the traffic will take the straight route, the Ring Road will be hassle free to drive in...so automatically, the ring road will also attract the optimum amount of traffic. It is said that the traffic is managed on the ring road in such a way so that there are minimum stoppages and minimum jams. All those who are not aware of the big city traffic light system should know that there is a concept of Synchronised Traffic Lights Scheme which is applied in alot of routes! According to this scheme, if one is driving at a constant speed of 40 kmph or 60 kmph (depending on the speed specified for the route) one will not intercept any red light...so a red light free driving although there a complete traffic light system!! This is managed by maintaining this route on a high priority basis and synchronising the other intersecting routes based on the timings of this route.

Well, the Ring Road has its own Sunchronized System and it is given the highest priority as far as traffic movement is concerned. The more the number of flyovers on the Ring Road, the better it is for the intersecting routes.

Now, how did i come upto this point? Oh Ok....

So we were talking about memory...as i started with the memory on alternate routes,there is a memory that the traffic maintains on two aspects...speed and stoppage time! If you are driving a lazy sunday afternoon, a slow driver on the main road would be cursed by the other drivers because of slowing the traffic!! Alternatively, on a busy saturday night, one drunk driver has the capacity to delay lakhs of people on the road! Am i thinking of Butterfly Effect here???

We have all seen movies where one accident on the road forces the entire set of cars lines coming in full speed behind to crash!! The famous Freeway scene of Matrix Reloaded comes to my mind...the entire dynamics of the traffic was maintained on this...if one small accident causes a memory lapse for sometime..cars are not able to stop immediately...they crash...bt as a few number of cars crash, the rest of the drivers see this coming..and either slow down or divert! Thats Memory for you! One accident and Short Term Memory Loss!!

Also, there are cases when an alternate route joins the main route ahead! How does this happen? Yes, you will tell me these cars are noone else but human beings who 'remember' the route! I agree...it might seem trivial that i am just calling human being's memory as 'traffic's memory'!! But one should not miss the point that here we are talking about thousands of individuals on one single road...driving in their own moods swings, to different destinations, at different variable speeds and the like! Would it be right to call them one entity? However,i can club all of them together and call them "Traffic", right?

So when the first car on the alternate route, hits the main road...till then the skeptical second driver and all the others following him are relying on him (his memory) and when he finally joins the main road, there is a sense of accomplishment and this is translated into the memory of the first driver being translated into the memory of the entire column of traffic!!!

So what about that road block which made this traffic divert...this small mishap caused the entire traffic to forget its route for part...alternatively it also helped it generate an alternate intelligence or shall i say activate an alternate memory which helped the column to join the road ahead!! One more angle can be found here to the conversation---->the broken down car or vehicle did not do anything to the traffic ahead of it...proving that traffic acts like the human memory...there is no foresight...only recollection of the past events! Also,what the human dreams of is nothing else but the destination in the minds of the drivers! They are all moving on their pre destined paths to their own destinations!

Lets look at the maze of traffic where everyone is moving to their own destination points in a criss cross manner...getting simulteneously effected by every piece of traffic it crosses! No wonder, we all answer to the question, "why were you late?". "Got stuck in the heacy traffic". The most obvious explaination would be - noone forced you to take that route...you must have taken either the route that u always took or chosen the least traffic density path for yourself...bt then, you have been defeated by the traffic's memory which has been there for a long time and you have now become a part of it! I mean, there might have been an accident on your regular route two hours back...and you either joined this route unknowingly, or when you were on your way...someone informed you (by memory again) about the accident and it forces you to become that extra intelligent and form the new traffic!

So now, can we ask the question, whose memory does the traffic take? The smartest person in the traffic or the dumbest!!

My answer is ---- of the person, who heads the traffic!!

Arnt we all followers? in our daily lives? in the way we drive? in our memories?