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I have a different theory on why people jump into gaps: they're bored. Traffic jams are really dull, and the illusion of progress is much more entertaining. So not really greed.

And it's more ignorance/self-centeredness than short-sightedness; they haven't thought of the jam as a systemic problem to which they're contributing.

>When I try this, most other people have no idea what I'm doing and/or are stupidly greedy and go "OMG A GAP" and rush into it. I'll also typically have people behind me honking / flashing their headlights at me, as they're equally clueless. I've had one dude and his wife, in a Harley Davidson edition F150 actually roll down their window and scream at me for "not knowing how to drive".

I understand your plight. I've had this happen to me on a number of occasions, it sucks :(

I beg to differ, and that's a criticism I also have for the OP:

From my humble observations, traffic jams are caused because too much traffic (x cars/sec) flows into a bottleneck, i.e. something that can't allow x cars/sec to pass through. Whenever I get into a traffic jam, I play "spot the bottleneck" to ease my boredom, and so far I haven't found a case where there was none.

Transient traffic jams like the OP described seem to get solved by people accelerating as much as they can once they're past the jam. If there's no bottleneck ahead, they're indeed transient.

I agree with this observation. I cringe when I hear other comments talking about people driving through traffic trying to smooth out traffic waves. I am very suspicious about the claim that this speeds things up for anyone.

People accelerating hard and braking hard is not good for traffic, but if there is some guy moving slower than possible on a highway with a lot of commuters, many people will need to change lanes to avoid that obstacle. That is not good for traffic either.

Bottlenecks caused by an accident or merging lanes on a motorway are one thing, but I've seen traffic jams where the bottleneck was a disabled car that was well clear of the road, or the police have pulled someone over. In those instances there's no good reason to have a jam.

Well, there's a reason, it doesn't matter if it isn't good: other curious drivers. Here in Israel, traffic reporters on the radio routinely implore the listeners not to slow down and take a look, since it causes jams.

My point is, whatever causes a segment of the road to only allow x cars/sec will cause a bottleneck if there are more than x cars/sec incoming flow, regardless of whether it is inherent or not.

Of course there's a reason for the traffic jam, but people make it far far worse by tailgating.

I saw some fantastic traffic jams in China. There'd be some incident on a highway (not the toll highways, but the badly supervised free ones between nearby cities). People would drive on the wrong side of the road to get around it; on both sides. Eventually, there'd be thousands of cars backed up, on both sides of the road, unable to move more than a few feet. It was good news for the nearby shopkeepers, who'd have people leaving their cars to get something for dinner (since they couldn't move anywhere) - this did cause some issues when the traffic started moving again though.

But yes, originally a truck had broken down under an overpass or something, so arguably that was why it all started.

I experienced this as well but you know what, my driving experience is much less stressful on the whole and it's kind of amusing seeing people try to fill that gap by speeding past you only to slam on the brakes as second later.