935. Terrible Traffic Jams & Self-Driving Cars 🚗 (Topic & Vocabulary)
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You're listening to Luke's English Podcast. For more information, visit teachaluke.co.uk. Hello, listeners. Welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. Are you ready for some more English listening practice? Yes, you are? Okay, let's get started then. And just to begin this one, I want to tell you about something that happened to me last summer. So for our summer holiday last year,

My family and I went to Los Angeles to stay with my cousin and his family. It was lovely. And while we were there, we rented a car, of course, because you can't just be, you can't exist in Los Angeles without a car. There's a lot of driving that has to be done everywhere in the city. So we were driving around in this car one day, driving down the highway on the way to somewhere and

my wife next to me, two kids in the back and driving along this big multi-lane highway. And just in front of us, there was this interesting looking car with what looked like a sort of camera attached to the roof. And I said, oh, look, is that one of those Google cars? Is that one of those Google Maps street view cars?

Because, you know, those those you see them occasionally driving around. It's a Google car with a camera on the top and it's capturing images for Google Street View. You know, when you go into Google Maps, you can access Street View and essentially you can just like travel around most of the roads in the world and actually have a look around. It's incredible. And every now and then you see the Google car driving around. So I said, is that the Google car?

And I overtook the car. And as we overtook it, we all had a look at the car, you know, sort of had a look, see who was driving. There was no one in the car. It was completely empty. There was nobody in the driver's seat. The car was just driving itself. It was an automatic driverless car, a self-driving car.

And it's a weird thing to see. I don't know if you've ever seen one. Have you ever seen a driverless car, a car just driving itself down the road, surrounded by other cars, other vehicles? So we're all there, all of us humans driving cars down the street. And then there's just this driverless car with no one in the driver's seat. It's bizarre. It's really bizarre to see. But I think it's probably going to be something that we see more and more, isn't it?

Because as you may know, driverless cars are going to be a thing. They are the future. This is what people say. So it's only a matter of time before we start seeing these things every day, really. And you might be able to...

point out the moment when you first saw, you know, a driverless car, your first driverless car. Well, that was mine on holiday in LA. And not only that, there were other funny little things that we saw as well. So we were having breakfast together

in a kind of cafe sitting at a table outside the cafe, just sort of in the street and eating our breakfast. And this little thing, this little robot came rolling down the street, a kind of a box on wheels, just came rolling down the street next to us.

And it's like a delivery droid, like a kind of little robot that delivers packages. I think it was Amazon or something like that, FedEx or something, just an automated delivery bot, which was another funny thing. And my daughter was very amused by this. And we kept seeing them, kept seeing these things. It's so weird. It's like something out of Star Wars. It really is.

And I guess that's kind of normal in LA, I suppose, or certain other parts of California that you see these sorts of things. And yeah, we'll probably see these things more and more in other parts of the world as well. But have you ever seen a driverless car? Can you remember where you were when you saw your first driverless car?

And have you come across any similar kinds of technology like that? Now, this episode of the podcast is all about self-driving cars. It's all about traffic. It's about driving. It's about traffic jams. And it's about technology and the future, specifically how this relates to driving.

Another question for you at the beginning. What is traffic like where you live? Do you live in a city? Do you live in an urban area? What's the traffic like? Is it absolutely terrible like it seems to be in most places?

I feel like traffic is a major problem in our lives. There seems to be more and more cars on the road. Traffic jams are just terrible. What is the solution? Are self-driving cars the solution to this? And how? How could they solve...

our problems with traffic jams and everything. That's what this episode is all about. And just before I begin, I want to do the usual thing and set myself a 30-minute timer so that I can remember to drink water because this might be a long episode and it would be terrible, wouldn't it, if I got so dehydrated that I just passed out in the middle of the episode. It ends up being like a 10-hour episode. You know, 10 hours later, I wake up, you know,

Oh, water. So I have to make sure I drink some water. So let me just set my timer. And it could be a could be a little reminder for you as well to have a little drink of water as well. We have to stay hydrated. Siri, set a 30 minute countdown timer, please.

Okay, it's happening. Right, so without any further ado, let's get started. And I'm going to read from a PDF in this one. I prepared it in advance. You can get the PDF. There's a link in the description. Okay, so let's go to the PDF in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Here we go. Terrible traffic jams and self-driving cars. Topic and vocabulary. You'll see on the PDF, first of all, you've got the contents of the PDF.

It's in two parts. The first part is the transcript or notes for the episode. That's what I'll be reading through in just a moment. And the second part of the PDF is a vocabulary list with definitions and examples. If you look at the PDF, you'll see that some bits of vocab are highlighted in blue. Those are the things that are included in the list. And those are things I will try to explain during the episode if I can. So let's begin then. This is an episode overview, first of all. In this episode, I'm going to talk about these things first.

The exciting topic of driving cars and getting stuck in traffic jams. How exciting. Why traffic jams happen. How we can fix the problem of traffic in our lives. Self-driving cars and how they might or might not be the solution.

And the future of urban spaces and roads. And when we talk about urban, we're talking about built up areas in cities, for example. You have urban, meaning places like in the city. And then you have rural, right? That's R-U-R-A-L.

Rural means in the countryside. So urban means in the town or city. Rural meaning in the countryside. Right. So I'm going to break down during the episode. I'm going to break down a fascinating video on YouTube about this subject.

And I'll go through the transcript of the video explaining vocabulary and giving my comments. I'll look at several different arguments relating to self-driving cars and the future of our roads and urban spaces. As I said, vocabulary highlighted in bright blue on the PDF will be summarised in a list at the end of the episode. I'll also do my best to explain these bits of vocabulary as I go, as well as any others I think are worth pointing out. So there will be vocabulary.

So here's an episode discussing the problem of driving, traffic jams and the future of self-driving cars, roads and urban spaces with plenty of vocabulary explanations and maybe a bit of grammar, we will see, plus some pronunciation practice too, if you like. That is what you can expect from this episode. Technology and society, the sort of topic that could come up in an IELTS test in your reading, in your listening part, it may be even in the speaking part.

I expect this will end up being a long episode. I don't know yet because I haven't actually done it yet, but obviously. But, you know, that's because it might be long, but that's because I'm going into the subject in a lot of depth.

And I'll be dealing with quite a lot of specific vocabulary as well. So the reason it's long is because I'm taking a proper detailed look at this subject with a lot of insightful English teaching as well. So tons of content. So you're definitely getting your money's worth with this one. And considering this is completely free, that is a massive cost value ratio, isn't it?

Also, as I've said this already, but here we go again, there is a PDF available for this with the text of what I'm saying and a vocabulary list at the end.

That vocab list is extensive. There's a lot of good vocabulary to learn about cars, driving, traffic, urban spaces, city design and technology. The list is detailed with definitions and example sentences. If you're motivated, it could really help you improve your English with this episode. And it's completely free. You can download the PDF from my website link in the description. You're welcome, everybody.

By the way, if you appreciate my podcast, could you do me a favour? Could you add a like and comment wherever you're listening to this or watching this? Subscribe to the show if you like my content. Tell your friends about Luke's English Podcast. Share the episodes online somehow. Maybe also, maybe treat yourself to an ice cream because you bloody well deserve it today. Okay?

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What could I do with this? I know, I'll give it to Luke from Luke's English Podcast. Good idea. So first, a bit of a ramble about driving and getting stuck in traffic. Driving can be a nightmare, can't it?

It's not always like it is in the adverts. Not for me anyway, as a guy living in the middle of a busy city. In car adverts, drivers are always sweeping along deserted mountain roads, the empty tarmac, that's the surface of the road.

the empty tarmac stretching out into the distance the sunset reflecting off the bonnet of the perfectly clean car the bonnet that's the front part you open up the bonnet and normally that you'll find the engine underneath that's so that's the bonnet so sweeping along a deserted mountain road

the empty tarmac, the perfectly clean empty tarmac stretching out into the distance, the sunset reflecting off the bonnet of the perfectly clean car, while the driver

Some generic handsome guy in a nice shirt smugly grips the steering wheel and feels very, very satisfied with himself because he owns a Hyundai or a Mazda or something, right? That's what car adverts are typically like. In reality...

It's more a case of being stuck in an endless series of traffic jams, surrounded by other stressed-out drivers, your blood pressure rising and your leg aching from constantly pressing down slightly on the accelerator to edge forwards in order to close the minute gap that opens up behind the car in front. This is what the reality is, right? You just sit there staring at the car in front,

Any little gap that arrives, you just edge forward to fill it, right? The accelerator, that's the pedal that makes the car go forwards. You just press, constantly pressing down slightly on the accelerator. Are you like me? Does your leg basically just start to kill you after about an hour of this?

edging forwards, moving forwards slightly. No one ever shows this in adverts, although actually they do show that sort of thing in adverts. But what they always do is they'll show someone stuck in traffic, maybe with a family and the kids are complaining. And then the car sort of something happens and all the cars get eliminated.

Or the car takes off and flies or something like that. And then you get that smug self-satisfied, I'm such a smug driver because I'm driving a Honda. I don't know. But yes, in reality, pressing down slightly on the accelerator to edge forwards in order to close the minute gap, the tiny gap that opens up behind the car in front until the traffic jam miraculously just eases off.

And you wonder why it had happened in the first place. Does that ever happen to you? You're just stuck in a traffic jam on a motorway and just, oh God, there must be an accident or something. And then you just, after a while, the traffic jam just stops and everyone carries on. Like what was all that about? But at least you have Luke's English podcast to keep you company while you do it. Traffic jams are a major problem and there are different kinds, but what causes them

Is it the roads? Is it lights, traffic lights? Is it the number of cars? What is it actually causing the traffic jams? I'm actually amazed by how roads and highways are organised and it's sort of incredible to me how we don't have more accidents than we do. Although to be fair, driving is probably one of the most dangerous things we do, isn't it? Going on the road is significantly more dangerous than flying, for example.

although flying is something that a lot of us are very anxious about and afraid of, which tells you something about human nature, I suppose. What we perceive to be a threat to us is not always what really is a threat to us. We think flying is a huge risk because, of course, it's incredible to imagine a huge metal plane full of people can actually fly in the air. But we should be scared of plenty of other things. In fact...

The plastic kettle in your kitchen, which you use to make tea and coffee every day, is actually more dangerous than flying a few times a year. You're more likely to die because of the plastic kettle than you are from taking a flight. But most people are way more scared of planes than cups of tea, right? What we think is dangerous is not always what is really dangerous to us. Now, I'm getting away from the topic of my traffic jams here.

But by the way, the thing about the plastic kettles is this. So plastic kettles can easily release harmful chemicals into the boiling water. That's BPA or microplastics, which over time can lead to various health problems, including an increased risk of cancer. And this is especially true if the kettle is scratched or damaged or old.

And I'm not even mentioning the fact that electrical products like kettles can malfunction and start fires. Or you could just end up having an accident and just pour boiling water over your hand or something, which, I don't know, might make you so shocked and surprised that you lose your balance and fall out of a window. All because you weren't scared of the kettle in your kitchen.

Mmm, you'll never look at your kettle in the same way again. Anyway, I digress. Driving. Driving is actually really dangerous, but it's totally normal and we rarely think twice about it, whereas flying is something that makes us stress out madly, but is far less likely to result in us getting killed. Do I need to prove, do I need to provide some statistics? Not really, but I'll do it anyway. So I'm going to give you some stats now. So these numbers are from the USA,

Now, maybe other countries drive more carefully. I don't know. But anyway, I'll give you some data from the USA. And these numbers come from sources such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, otherwise known as the NHTSA, as you already knew, and the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA. And as summarised,

In transportation safety reports by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and other studies. Okay. So in terms of fatality rates, that means death rates, driving in the United States, there are about 1.34 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. All right. 100 million vehicle miles traveled, 1.34 fatalities. Okay. Okay.

Hmm. Is that a lot? It actually doesn't seem that much. In terms of flying, though, it's much lower. Commercial airline travel has about 0.003 fatalities per 100 million passenger miles, making it thousands of times safer per mile travelled.

In terms of the likelihood of dying in either case, in terms of driving, the lifetime odds of dying in a car crash are approximately 1 in 101. 1 in 101.

according to the National Safety Council in the US. So the chances of you dying in a car crash in America, in the United States, at some point in your life, if you live there, probably. So the chances of you dying in a car crash at some point in your life, probably at the end, let's be honest, are one in 101. Basically, about a 1% chance that you'll die in a car crash.

Which I think is alarmingly high, actually. Anyway, in terms of flying, the lifetime odds of dying in a plane crash are about 1 in 205,552. That's about a 0.00049 chance of dying in a plane crash.

clearly significantly less. So apologies for getting sidetracked here, but this is fascinating. I've got some more data. I've got a pie chart which explains, it shows the estimated lifetime risk of death from various causes, right? Sorry for being distracted by this, but I do find this interesting. The biggest one, 27.5%

The largest piece of the pie is heart disease, followed by cancer, 19.3%, and then Alzheimer's disease, 15.2%. And then other significant large portions, you've got accidental injuries, which I suppose would include car crashes, diabetes,

infectious diseases, having a stroke, that's where you burst a blood vessel in your brain, God forbid, liver disease, kidney disease, chronic respiratory disease, that's like your lungs, and then you've got small slivers, including suicide, and the smallest one, homicide, that's being killed by someone. Bear in mind, this is in the United States.

The accidental injuries one does include car crashes, and that breaks down like this. So, falls are the most common cause of death by accidental injury, especially in older people, I suppose. 30% roughly of accidental injuries. Drownings, that's nearly 25% of death by accidental injury is caused by drowning. That's where you fall in water and you can't breathe.

Because you can't breathe in water, can you? Can you? If you can, I'd be impressed. Then you've got poisoning. And by the way, poisoning refers to things like drug overdoses of both prescription drugs or illegal drugs, carbon monoxide poisoning, food poisoning, alcohol poisoning, household chemicals and industrial chemicals and stuff. So that's what poisoning refers to, 20%.

And then car crash is 18.3% of accidental injuries. And then you've got other injuries is 6.1%. And then plane crash is in there with 0.6%. 0.6% of death by accidental injury, which itself accounts for 6.9% of all deaths. Okay. Anyway, let me make that point again.

Driving is more dangerous than flying, and that's just from accidents. There's also the health risks related to air pollution from both cars and planes. But I'm getting really distracted here by very interesting statistics about how we're all going to die in various ways. In any case, it will definitely be something related to our health, I suppose.

Ha ha. Okay, so I ended up in a dark little rabbit hole there. Let's now crawl out and re-emerge, blinking into the light to continue talking about traffic jams. So here we are emerging from our rabbit hole of death to blink into the light. Oh, that's right. We were talking about traffic jams. So I was talking about traffic jams and I was saying that they are incredibly frustrating, but also a bit of a mystery. What causes them?

In many cases, it's obvious, but sometimes not. Do traffic jams happen because roads and cities are badly organised? It depends on the city, I suppose. But I think most road systems are incredibly well designed to help manage the flow of traffic in the most efficient way.

In most of my experiences of driving in cities, the way that the lanes are organized, the way that lanes feed off into different slip roads, you know, the way that the signage works, the lights, all of it's incredibly well organized, actually. Yeah.

Driving is dangerous and problematic, but it could be way worse if we didn't have professionals planning our roads very carefully. Still, we do have traffic jams. This is my point. So why do they happen even when road systems are incredibly well designed and carefully planned? I mean, it doesn't help when drivers drive badly. When was the last time you noticed someone driving badly? I mean, it happens just constantly.

If we all followed the rules, followed the system as we're supposed to, and drove in exactly the right way, a lot of traffic jams wouldn't happen. They wouldn't go away completely, but they would be less of a problem, I think. Of course, we can also point out that there are just too many cars on the roads, but the main culprit is still the homo sapiens behind the wheels of the cars. Let's look at some different causes of traffic jam, though.

Firstly, jams happen because there are too many cars on the roads and traffic jams and junctions slow everything down. Traffic lights and junctions mean so lights, we know junctions. That's where two roads meet.

Junctions mean that the traffic can't flow and the volume of cars on the road is greater than the speed at which those cars can flow through the system. Hence all the awful congestion that happens in towns and cities. Another reason is that people break the rules and enter a junction when the exit is not free, causing the entire junction to get blocked. Have you seen that happen? You've got, let's say, a cross-junction junction.

Right, we've got one major road going that way and another major road going across it. You end up with a kind of square junction.

and there are lights that dictate how things are supposed to work. Cars are not supposed to enter the junction if the exit isn't free. But of course people do, right? Because the light's green and people want to get through the light, so they just edge, roll forwards and end up stuck in the junction. Then of course the lights change and you end up with a kind of gridlock situation.

This happens a lot where I live in Paris and it drives me completely round the bend because it could be avoided. Here's what happens. So first, people edge through red lights because they attach themselves to the back of the car in front.

Do you know what I mean? So loads of cars are lined up at the entrance to a square junction and the lights are red. That's how we start. It's rush hour. There's a big queue of cars. There are lights and then a square junction. And it's the same the other way as well. All entrances to this square junction are very busy.

Suddenly the lights go green, but the driver in the car at the front is daydreaming about cheese or holidays or something and doesn't notice. Then all the cars behind this, the drivers are staring at the light, the green light. They start beeping the moment it turns green. Beep, beep, beep.

The driver in the first car eventually wakes up from his daydream and crawls through the lights and the cars behind follow right behind him, almost bumper to bumper. The bumper is the part of the car at the front and the back that I suppose is supposed to protect the car if it bumps into something slightly. So the cars are like bumper to bumper crawling through the lights. Everyone is stressed out and frustrated that they're not at home by now.

One car passes through the green light as it turns red. So that green light turns red as one car is passing through. And the next car is so close behind that the driver decides that they are essentially all part of the same car. The driver thinks, well, I'm so close behind that. Yeah, it's the same car. My car, that car. Yeah, it's the same car. And so it's OK if he passes through the red light as well.

So he sticks to the back of the other car and essentially passes through as if they are all one car. Amazingly, this continues to happen with cars sneaking right through the red light until there are cars stuck in the middle of the junction because the exit is not free due to too many cars there too.

Then the light for cars going across the junction now turns green and the other drivers coming across the junction can't pass because of all the other drivers who sneaked through. But this doesn't stop them because they have the right to get through. After all, the light is green for them. So they attempt to squeeze through the gaps in the line of cars blocking the junction and then everyone ends up all jammed in together all this way and that way.

And nobody thinks they've done anything wrong. They all get furious, impotently beeping their horns, beep, beep, beep, and the entire city ends up angry and late just another day on the roads around Paris. If they'd just respected the lights and left the middle of the junction clear, everything would be fine. But no, these particular humans can't bear to make that personal sacrifice and stop when it's their turn to stop.

So there are jams caused by lights and junctions and traffic systems getting overcrowded and people just being self-centred and breaking the rules. But then there are those mysterious traffic jams I mentioned earlier. There are those jams that happen on the motorway where you're driving along quite fast and suddenly you see up ahead that the cars are slowing down. You see the red lights flashing. Some people put their warning lights on, the flashing yellow lights.

some people are slowing down and eventually you have to come to a complete stop then you have to do that frustrating thing where you edge forward bit by bit for an infuriatingly long time before the cars ahead eventually speed up again and away you all go sometimes there's an accident or road works which cause this

The accident can block the road, of course, or simply drivers slow down to look, which holds up traffic behind them. But sometimes you don't see any cause of the traffic jam. There was just a big traffic jam and then it stopped. And there's no obvious reason why. So what's going on here? This brings me to a really interesting video. So this is a video by a YouTuber called CGP Grey.

He makes sort of interesting videos about a range of subjects, looking at situations in a different way and commenting on some of the typical things that we all experience, like, for example, systems like driving systems or the way that passengers drive.

are allowed to board aeroplanes and how that's inefficient. So very interesting videos. This particular one, you might have seen this video or one of his others. He's got about 6.5 million subscribers on YouTube and this video has 40 million views. So you might have seen it before.

He makes short, informative video essays on a variety of interesting subjects. Some of those 40 million views of this video are me, because I've used this video quite a few times in my English lessons.

It's an engaging topic, a good listening exercise, a way to learn some vocab and grammar, and also a good way to practice pronunciation by reading out the text, considering where to pause and which syllables and words to emphasize, and how to use information to deliver the lines clearly. I'm going to be reading through the transcript for the video. And in fact, you could do that yourself. You could read it out loud yourself.

Okay, as an exercise in pronunciation and using your voice to deliver information. So you could try that. Pause the episode.

Scroll down the PDF, scroll the PDF forwards a bit until you find the script for the video, which is just below, and read it out loud and focus on pausing in the right places to emphasize the information in the video. How can you deliver this information as if you're doing the voiceover of the video or doing a presentation? And that involves pausing in certain places and using intonation.

So you could try doing that. Read it out loud. See how you do. Then continue the episode and see how I did it. Compare your version to mine.

Okay, so that's just something you could try doing. You could pause the episode now and practice reading out loud. Or you could shadow with me, or you could just do it later. Up to you. So the video is entitled The Simple Solution to Traffic. It was uploaded eight years ago now, and as the title suggests, it explains a particular solution to the problem of traffic congestion.

So we talk about traffic jams. So a jam, that is a countable noun, which means it can be plural, a traffic jam or some traffic jams. But also we talk about congestion. Congestion is an uncountable noun. So we have some congestion, how much congestion, how much traffic congestion is there today, how much traffic congestion is there in your city, etc.

And congestion refers to things being blocked. So traffic congestion, traffic being blocked on the roads. You also have nasal congestion, which is something that happens in your nose. If you catch a cold, you get congestion. And it means you get a blocked up nose and you might need to take some decongestants. Those are pills that will help to unblock the congestion in your nose. So anyway, the video suggests...

a solution to the problem of traffic congestion, while also explaining why traffic jams often happen in the first place. So what do you think, what causes a lot of those traffic jams, especially the mysterious ones, and what will his solution be? You can probably guess from considering what I've been talking about. So first I'll read out the transcript of the video, then I'll summarise it and give some comments, then I'll go back through the script and we'll highlight some bits of English vocabulary and maybe grammar, we'll see.

Also, when I'm reading out the script, just consider the way I'm pausing, stressing different parts of each line and using intonation. That's the way my voice rises and falls. If you want to practice your pronunciation, you could pause the episode and repeat each line after me, paying attention to these details. Anyway, let me now read out the script to you. So what causes traffic jams and how can they be solved?

And, extra bonus question, do you think this is written in British English or American English and how can you tell? So this is the simple solution to traffic by CGP Grey video transcript. Here we go. Stuck at an intersection, you always watch unfold the fundamental problem of traffic. On green, the first car accelerates, then the next, and then the next, and so on, until you, only to catch the red.

Had the cars accelerated simultaneously, you would have made it through. Coordination, not cars, is the problem. We are monkey drivers with slow reaction times and short attention spans. Even if we tried, getting everyone to press the pedal on 3, 2, 1, now would be challenging. This lack of coordination limits how many cars can get through an intersection.

When one intersection backs up to the next, that's when city-sized gridlock cascades happen, taking forever to clear. In general, more intersections mean more dis-coordination, which means more traffic. This is the motive behind big highways: no intersections. Splits and merges: yes. no stopping, no coordination problems, no traffic.

Well, that's the theory anyway. Intersections outside of a highway will back up onto it. Again, human reaction times limit how many cars can escape the off-ramp when the light changes.

But even without intersections, there would still be traffic on the highway. Phantom traffic. Traffic can just appear. Take a one-lane highway with happy cars flowing until a chicken crosses the road. The driver who sees it brakes a little. The driver behind doesn't notice immediately and brakes a little harder than necessary.

The driver behind them does the same until someone comes to a complete stop. Oh, and oh look, cars approaching at highway speeds must now stop as well. Though the chicken is long gone, it left a phantom intersection on the highway. This is what happens when you're stuck in traffic for hours, thinking there must be a deadly pileup ahead.

Then suddenly the traffic's over with no wreckage in sight to your relief if you're a good person and mild annoyance if you aren't. You just passed through a phantom intersection, the cause of which is long gone. And this phantom intersection moves. It's really a traffic snake slithering down the road, eating oncoming cars at one end and pooping them out the other.

On a ring road, a single car slowing down will start an Ouroboros of traffic that lasts forever, even though there's no problem with the road. If drivers could coordinate to accelerate and separate simultaneously, easy driving would return, but they can't. So, traffic eternal. Traffic snakes on highways.

On highways, traffic snakes grow if cars are eaten faster than excreted, and shrink if excreted faster than eaten. They die when the last car accelerates away before the next car must stop. On multi-lane highways, there doesn't even need to be a chicken to start gridlock. A driver crossing lanes quickly with cars too close behind is enough to birth a traffic snake that lives for hours.

This quick crossing causes drivers behind to overbrake, starting a chain reaction. But we can make traffic snakes less likely by changing how we drive.

How to drive better. Your goal as a driver is to stay the same distance from the car ahead as from the car behind at all times. Tailgating is trouble, not just because it makes accidents more likely, but because you, as the tailgater, can start a traffic snake if the driver ahead brakes. Always stay in the middle. This gives you the most time to prevent overbraking and gives the driver behind you the most time as well.

When stuck in traffic, this rule would help all cars pull apart the snake faster. That's the simple solution to traffic, getting humans to change their behaviour. Perhaps sharing this video would help explain how and why traffic happens, why tailgaters are trouble, and how we can work together to make the roads better for all. A structural solution. The end. Except, yeah, wishing upon a star that people will be better than they are

Terrible solution every time. Instead, what works is a structurally systematized solution, which is exactly what self-driving cars are. Self-driving cars can just be programmed to stay in the middle and accelerate simultaneously. They'll just do it. The more self-driving cars at an intersection, the more efficient the intersection gets. A solid lane of self-driving cars vastly increases throughput.

Hmm, actually, if you ban humans from the road, which we should totally do anyway, you can get rid of the intersection entirely. After all, a traffic light is just a tool for drivers on one road to communicate with drivers on another. Poorly and coarsely, red equals don't go now, we're coming through the intersection, green equals good to go. But self-driving cars can talk to each other at the speed of light.

With that kind of coordination, no traffic light is necessary. Just as with the highway, the best intersection is no intersection. Humans will never drive this precisely. At the intersection, the fundamental problem of traffic that you watch unfold, like everything, is people. So, the real simple solution to traffic? No more monkeys driving cars.

OK, so that's the that was the transcript for a simple solution to traffic by CGP Grey. And I'm going to summarise that in a moment and maybe explain some bits of language or highlight some things. But you heard my alarm going off. That means it's time for me to drink some water from a from a massive bottle. So let me do that right now.

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Well, yeah, it's American English, although obviously I was reading it out in my British accent. But yeah, that's American English. How could you tell? It was a few giveaways, a few little clues that gave it away. Bits of vocabulary. The main indicators probably are the words intersection and highway.

In British English, we would say junction and motorway, respectively. So an intersection in American English and a junction in British English, a highway in American English and a motorway in British English. Those are the fastest roads that we have, right? That's a highway or a motorway, the ones with no junctions on them.

So let me summarise the video. So the fundamental problem of traffic, first of all, traffic arises, it happens from poor coordination between drivers. This is the main reason we have traffic. At junctions or lights, drivers accelerate one by one but not in a coordinated way, right? So one driver accelerates and the other one doesn't accelerate at exactly the same speed. There's a little pause or something.

This is due to reaction time delays causing inefficiencies. Traffic gets worse when multiple drivers... Sorry, traffic gets worse when multiple junctions back up into each other. So let's say you've got lights...

On a busy street in Paris, for example, a street that crosses through the centre of the city will have loads of lights and junctions at regular intervals. And a traffic jam in front of one junction will back up, meaning that the cars add to the back of the line all the way up to the next junction, which is why...

When the light is green and you crawl through, often the exit of that junction is blocked because there's a traffic jam for the next set of lights. And the cars have all backed up all the way up to the exit from the next junction, right? Which is why that square junction gets filled with cars because the traffic jam from the next junction has backed up, okay?

So multiple junctions back up into each other. This is how you get gridlock. Gridlock refers to all of the roads, all the junctions. And in the USA, of course, most cities are designed in a grid style where you have these blocks. And so you get gridlock, which is where every street in the grid is locked with cars. Then we've got phantom traffic and traffic snakes. So even on motorways, traffic can appear without an obvious cause.

This is those mysterious, mysterious traffic jams. So it could be anything that slows down the traffic, such as a chicken crossing. Not that that happens very regularly, but just some little delay or someone suddenly braking for some reason or in a multi-lane highway. Someone just moving from one lane to the other and the cars are too close to each other and the car behind has to brake.

meaning sort of slow down, and that causes another driver to slow down, and eventually one of them has to stop completely, and then you end up with a traffic snake. So a small slowdown can cause a chain reaction where each car behind has to slow down too, leading to traffic snakes that grow or shrink based on driving behavior.

So cars are going, one car slows down, another car, because the driver is not really paying attention, slows down a little bit too late, and then the other driver slows down a bit too late, and they actually have to stop, and because one car stopped, that means it causes all the other cars to have to stop as well, while they wait for that other car to accelerate off, and that little bunching up, where cars have to stop and then accelerate,

You've got cars accelerating from the front and cars bunching up at the back. So the back...

That's the mouth of the snake as it gobbles up cars, and the front, where the cars are accelerating away, that's the tail end, and that's where the snake is pooping out cars. And if it eats cars more quickly than it poops them out, that's when a traffic snake grows. If the cars accelerate away, if it poops out, if it poos out cars more quickly than it eats, that's when a traffic snake dies. Okay?

So traffic snakes that grow or shrink based on driving behavior. Traffic snakes are caused by drivers reacting to other cars slowing down, their poor reaction times and lack of coordination, causing the flow of traffic to stop, wait and then start up again. And so the traffic snake moves through the road, along the highway, eating up cars and then pooping them out at the other end, causing a phantom intersection.

So these snakes can pass down a motorway and persist for hours, even when the original cause is gone. This is why traffic jams can appear on motorways without an obvious reason. And there is actually a video, the BBC One show did a little feature on this, where they actually demonstrated this in action. And they created a circular single lane road and they put cars all around it.

And what the cars had to do was just drive around and drive around, you know, just keep the flow of cars moving. But of course, because it's very hard to stay coordinated, eventually one car drives a little faster than the car in front and they have to brake and then the other, you know. And you can see the traffic snake in action. Time to get those wheels in motion.

So we can see what's happening, Eddie and I need a better vantage point. Ready, steady, and they're off. Eddie, what are we expecting to see here? Well, what we've got is a very simple mock-up of a single lane and busy motorway. Everyone's going to try and drive at the same speed, but driving behaviour's not perfect. Some people go a little bit faster, some people go a bit slower, and the traffic will start to bunch up.

As Eddie predicted, some of the drivers start to vary their speeds and the distance between the cars changes. They begin to bunch up and sure enough, a cluster of vehicles comes to a standstill. A phantom traffic jam has formed.

When we speed up the footage, we can see this traffic jam starting to spread backwards around the circle. And once it starts, it just keeps going. There's the traffic snake. So all it takes really then is a couple of people to brake or something and that sets it all off. Sure. If there are enough cars on the road, something very minor can get magnified into a traffic jam.

Right. Exactly. Right. OK, so how drivers can reduce traffic according to CGP Grey. So, first of all, avoid tailgating. Tailgating is that incredibly irritating thing that people do on roads. You know, you're driving along and then the car behind you sits right on your arse.

They sit right on your back bumper, basically driving really close behind you. This is tailgating. It's very dangerous and it's very annoying. And not only is it unsafe, because obviously if you have to stop suddenly, then they will crash into the back of you. So not only is it unsafe, but it also causes traffic snakes because driving that close behind another car means that you can't... It's very difficult to coordinate with the car in front. If they have to slow down, you'll have to slow down hard enough

and it can result in someone having to stop and so on. So avoid tailgating and maintain equal distance from the cars in front and behind. So always try and stay in the middle between the two cars, the one in front and the one behind. This prevents overbraking

and stopping and helps dissolve traffic snakes faster. However, relying on all drivers to behave perfectly is unrealistic. This is the point. This is where self-driving cars come in. Self-driving cars can coordinate acceleration,

meaning speeding up, and maintain safe distances automatically. More self-driving cars at junctions would increase traffic efficiency. With enough self-driving cars, traffic lights and even junctions could become obsolete, meaning

just unnecessary, right? We imagine a future where roads can be filled with self-driving cars that interact perfectly and with complete coordination, reducing congestion while increasing the number of cars. The ultimate solution then, replace human drivers or monkeys driving cars with autonomous vehicles, that's another word for self-driving cars, to eliminate human error. Okay, now we're going to

Look at a response to that in a moment. But on the face of it, what do you think? What do you think of the idea of, first of all, replacing humans with automatic vehicles? How would you feel in a car with no driver driving down the road? Would you feel more or less safe than being in a car with some bloke called Dave driving the car? Who do you trust more?

And there are lots of issues, actually. It's not just about who do you trust and which one is more safe. And I think that when the technology gets to a certain level, I think we can be sure that the technology would probably, on average, would probably be safer than humans. And like I've said in the past, we will probably get to a point in the future where self-driving cars and that kind of automatic technology is completely normal.

And we will look back on the days when humans drove cars at like 80 miles per hour down busy motorways with other cars coming the other direction at the same time and having to change lanes. We will look back at these days and we will think that we were insane, you know? It'll be like the way we look back at the days when certain kinds of healthcare were wrong, you know, when we...

we used to tap holes in people's heads to release evil spirits, or when people used to, doctors would recommend smoking because it was good for the lungs. We'll look back at the times when we drove cars on roads and we will think that it was completely insane when automatic cars are normal or some other system. So yeah, that's one solution then.

a situation where the world is full of just loads of automatic cars all communicating with each other simultaneously. But can you see any issues with this idea? We'll come to that in a moment. Let's do a little language review though first. Let me now go back through the transcript and just point out some of the vocabulary and maybe any grammar that I think is worth noticing. So at this point I'm going to go back up to the top of the transcript for that video which is further up the page here somewhere.

Let's go. Let's keep going. So here we go. Let me just read through it again and just maybe point out some language. So stuck at an intersection, you always watch unfold the fundamental problem of traffic. If you watch something unfold, it means you watch it happen. So something can happen. Something can unfold. Something can take place. Something can arise. These are all different ways of saying happen, happen, unfold, take place, arise, unfold.

Those are the ones that just come to me. You can watch unfold the fundamental problem of traffic. That's a slightly odd structure. I would normally say you always watch the fundamental problem of traffic unfold. But we've got unfold...

first, right here. I think it's mainly for emphasis, right? You can watch unfold the fundamental problem of traffic. It allows the fundamental problem of traffic to go at the end of the sentence, which is just a bit more emphatic. On green, the first car accelerates. So we know accelerate means speed up. Then the next and then the next and so on until you only to catch the red, meaning you're the one who gets the red light. Had the cars accelerated simultaneously, you would have made it through.

So there's a couple of things in this sentence. So we've got a third conditional. Had the cars accelerated, you would have made it through. It's a slightly odd third conditional, though, isn't it? Because normally, as you know, with conditional sentences, we have if. If the cars had accelerated. But we can make third conditionals in another way.

with, had at the beginning, had the cars accelerated simultaneously, you would have made it through. Had I, what? I don't know. Had I not eaten breakfast this morning, I would be feeling hungry now. That's actually a mixed conditional, past and present. Had I not eaten breakfast, I would be feeling hungry now. Had I not eaten breakfast, I would have felt hungry. It's past and past. Anyway, if I had...

can be expressed had I, had I done it, right? If I had, accelerate, if I had eaten breakfast or had I eaten breakfast. Third conditional, it's about the past. We've got had and a past form, right? If I had done it or had I done it. The second clause in that sentence is with would have done, right? You would have made it through, you would have felt hungry. Yeah, okay.

All right, then. Coordination, not cars, is the problem. We are monkey drivers with slow reaction times and short attention spans. So you have a reaction time, that's your ability to react in a certain time, and your attention span...

is how long you can stay focused on something. So do you have a long attention span or a short attention span? If you've got a short attention span and you're the sort of person who just likes to watch TikTok, like my friend Amber, although she's got a pretty good attention span, she can focus on reading complex history books about Paris and stuff. But anyway, short attention span means you can only focus, you can only hold your, something can hold your attention for a short time

You can have a longer tension span. That's a tension span and reaction times, you know, your ability to react to a stimulus quickly or not. OK, even if we tried getting everyone to press the pedal on 3, 2, 1, now would be challenging. The pedal, your feet operate the pedals in a car. If it's an automatic car, you've got two pedals. You've got stop and go, right, or accelerate and brake.

Accelerate meaning speed up, brake meaning slow down. If it's a manual car with a gear stick and a gearbox, then you've got three pedals. You've got accelerate, brake and clutch. The clutch is the one that disengages the gearbox and allows you to change gears.

Okay, this lack of coordination limits how many cars can get through an intersection fine when one intersection backs up to the next when as I've said before it backs up meaning more cars add are added to the back the back of the the queue Extends to a certain place it backs up what else can back up? I'm obviously you can back up your hard drive, but Something can back up. It's hmm. I

Yeah, accumulate. Accumulate behind something. Build up, a bit like build up or back up meaning at the back. So a queue of people can back up. Maybe if you've got water running through a system and something blocks the water, the water will back up. Okay, so it's accumulate.

When one intersection backs up to the next, that's when city-sized gridlocks happen or gridlock cascades. A cascade is when one thing flows over into another one, like a waterfall.

In this case, like a backwards waterfall, I suppose, where cars, instead of flowing through, they flow backwards and end up causing big gridlocks. So as I said before, a gridlock is when all the roads in a system get completely jammed.

A grid, you know, that's where you've got a kind of grid system with roads, parallel roads going up and parallel roads going across. That is a grid. And a gridlock is when all of those roads are blocked.

In general, more intersections mean more discoordination, which means more traffic. This is the motive behind big highways. The motive is the reason for doing something, right? Often we talk about motive in crime. What was the motive for the murder? What was the reason for the person to commit the murder? In this case, the motive behind big highways, the reason that big highways or big motorways are created. There are no junctions, no intersections, which allows for car flow.

Flow is the movement, the free movement of something. In the design of city spaces or buildings, we talk about people flow or car flow, the free movement of people through a system or cars through a system. It's fascinating to me studying people flow, you know, the way that buildings are designed.

or train stations, for example. A train station has to be designed in the most efficient way possible because you get these crowds of people moving through, often in different directions. And you've probably been in train stations, for example, which have very poor people flow, where people end up sort of jammed up and it's hard to walk through because everyone's going across in different directions. A place like Châtelet Station in the centre of Paris is

is famous for this and I've talked about this station before on the podcast famously you can get lost there very easily and you get sent in the wrong direction the way the signs work is really important to make people flow very efficient

splits and merges on a highway. So motorways can split, you know, when you're driving down a motorway and if you want to go to London, for example, you might need to stay in the two left-hand lanes because that motorway will split off and turn into...

a motorway that heads towards London, whereas the other side of the motorway will split off, turning into a motorway that will head towards Bristol or something like that. So a split and a merge, a merge is the opposite. Basically, that's where two roads become one. Or maybe when you are entering a motorway and you have a slip road,

which merges with the motorway, right, to increase the flow of traffic or to help the flow of traffic. Splits and merges. Splits when the road divides, merges when two roads join together seamlessly. No stopping, no coordination problems, no traffic. That's the theory. Intersections outside of a highway will back up onto it.

So when basically a highway, when there's a slip road that leaves a highway and then there's lights at the end, those, you know, that intersection there, that junction will cause traffic jams to back up onto the highway. So that you see that, of course, where everyone's trying to leave the motorway and that causes a traffic jam where the traffic backs up onto the motorway.

And human reaction times limit how many cars can escape the off-ramp when the light changes. So that's the off-ramp, that's the slip road leaving the motorway. But even without intersections, there would still be traffic on the highway. This is where we talk about phantom traffic, traffic snakes. Traffic can appear, it can just appear. Take a one-lane highway with happy cars flowing, just like the one in the BBC TV show with the circle of cars. Um...

Until a chicken crosses the road, the driver who sees it brakes a little. So to brake or to hit the brakes, the brakes are the things that slow down and stop the car, right? It's a verb and a noun. The driver behind doesn't notice immediately and brakes a little harder than necessary. The driver behind them does the same until someone comes to a complete stop. To come to a stop, to come to a complete stop. Not just stop, but come to a stop.

Slow down, slow down, slow down and come to a stop. And oh, look, cars approaching at highway speeds must now stop as well. Though the chicken is long gone. So though is the same as saying although. This is one of those words that's like saying but.

But notice that though and although, especially although, go at the beginning, right? Although the chicken is long gone, it left a phantom intersection on the highway. If we were to use the word but, it would be the chicken is long gone, but it left a phantom intersection on the highway. So but goes in the middle of one sentence.

So, although goes at the beginning and though go... Those words go at the beginning of a sentence with two contrasting clauses. Although the chicken is gone, it left a phantom intersection. Though the chicken is gone, it left a phantom intersection. So, same meaning, same grammar of though and although, but goes in the middle of the two clauses, right? Where the comma might be in one sentence. We also have other words, don't we? We have...

however, and we have despite and in spite of. So let me talk about those. And I'll also talk about though a little bit as well. So in terms of however, however goes in the middle as well, like but. But it goes at the beginning of a new sentence. So you'd have to put a full stop where the comma is. The chicken is long gone, full stop. However, it left a phantom intersection on the highway.

See? So, however goes in the middle between the two clauses with a capital letter at the start and a full stop. Let me write that. Okay. That's however in the middle, but always at the beginning of a new sentence. Whereas, but doesn't have to be. And that's obviously you don't have though. So, the chicken is long gone. Full stop. However, right? However, comma, it left a phantom intersection. Okay.

or the chicken is long gone, comma, but it left a phantom intersection. Like going back to the original sentence, though the chicken is long gone.

We've also got despite and in spite of, and those two things are exactly the same. Despite, in spite of, they have the same meaning and the same grammar, right? A mistake that people make is that they say despite of. They mix the two up, but don't do that. It's either despite or it's in spite of, okay? And the thing about this is that despite and in spite of are followed by...

a noun, they're not followed by a clause, which is a subject verb. Although, though, however, but, they are followed... They can be followed by a subject and a verb. Although the chicken is long gone. Although the chicken is. Right? Though the chicken is. However, it left. But it left. So, all of those are followed by a clause. That's a subject and a verb. But, the words despite and the phrase in spite of, they

They're followed by a noun. So you'd have to change the sentence somehow. Despite the chicken. How do you do that? You can't say despite the chicken is long gone because despite has to be followed by a noun, not a clause. So you'd have to change that clause, that verb in that clause, which is the chicken is. You'd have to change that is into a gerund to turn it into a noun. Despite the chicken being long gone, it left a phantom intersection on the highway. The same with in spite of.

In spite of the chicken being long gone, let me write that. Despite the chicken being long gone, it left a phantom intersection on the highway. Or if you don't want to use that gerund, if you want to keep it as a clause, the chicken is, then you can just say despite the fact that. Despite the fact that the chicken is long gone, it left a phantom intersection on the highway.

Why would you do that? I don't know. You might as well just say 'though' or 'although'. OK. Are you keeping up with this, everyone? I hope so. 'Although the chicken is long gone, it left a phantom intersection.' OK. And finally, one more note about the word 'though'. Just 'though', not 'although', just 'though'. You can put that right at the end if you want. Which is quite informal, quite common in spoken English. 'The chicken is long gone.' Full stop.

"It left a phantom intersection on the highway though." Which does the same thing, but it's more common in spoken English, I would say. Quite informal, you know. Like, "We've got no tea, I'm afraid, sorry. We've got some coffee though." Yeah. Okay, so let me just put that sentence back to how it was. It was "though the chicken is long gone, it left a phantom intersection on the highway." Okay.

This is what happens when you're stuck in traffic for hours thinking there must be a deadly pileup ahead. There must be, I'm sure of it, a deadly pileup. A pileup is a big crash involving a lot of different cars that have all crashed into each other. Then suddenly the traffic's over with no wreckage in sight. Wreckage would be the sort of remains of damaged cars, like cars that have crashed into each other, maybe like a car on the side of the road with a...

the front of the car is all smashed or something like that. That's wreckage. The remains of broken cars...

No wreckage in sight. To your relief, if you're a good person. What a relief. No accident. Or to your mild annoyance. If you're not a good person, meaning you just don't care about people. You just pass through a phantom intersection. Phantom, of course, is like ghost, isn't it? Like a ghost. A ghost intersection or a phantom intersection. The cause of which is long gone. I need to start myself another 30-minute timer. Siri, set a 30-minute timer, please.

Okay, that's happening because I think that I'm going to need some more water soon. In 30 minutes, in fact. And this phantom intersection moves. It's really a traffic snake slithering down the road. A snake slithers. That's what it does. You know the way snakes slide forwards? They slither.

Eating oncoming cars at one end and pooping them out the other. Pooping, poop, with a P at the end, that's American English. Poo is British English. They're both nouns and verbs. So in America, they talk about poop and to poop. And in British English, it's poo and to poo as well, right?

On a ring road, that's just a road that is a circle. But also, you find ring roads around cities. For example, London has a ring road around it. And you've got the north. It's the north circular and the south circular. That's what it's called. That is the ring road. Paris has a ring road, a motorway that goes around. It's called the Peripherique, the Boulevard Peripherique, a ring road.

On a ring road, a single car slowing down will start an Ouroboros of traffic. So an Ouroboros, I understand, is like a snake that eats its own tail. An Ouroboros that lasts forever and so on and so on. You know what? I'm going to skip forward a bit because I'm conscious that I'd like to make progress with this. I've talked about tailgating. I've talked about gridlock.

I've talked about multi-lane highways. Let's skip forward a bit more. Systematised solution, a solution that is based around a system, in this case an automatic system of self-driving cars. Throughput...

It's mentioned a solid lane of self-driving cars vastly increases throughput. So we've got output, which you know is the number of things coming out, and input, the things coming in. Throughput is the things going through. So cars go through an intersection. Throughput is like the way that cars go through or how you can make cars go through, the number of cars that go through. That's throughput.

OK, we're going to move on now to the response to that. OK, there is a response to this. I've done the language review. Let's move on to criticism of CGP Grey's video. And I'll

I'll read out another transcript. I'll read through it and then we'll conclude the episode. OK, so criticism of CGP Grey's video. So what do you think of CGP Grey's take on this subject? Do you agree? It sounds good on paper, right? Self-driving cars reduces the human element. It causes cars to be synchronized and synchronized.

therefore you don't get these kind of like traffic snakes and you get fewer traffic jams at intersections in fact you don't even need intersections at all you just have constant flow of cars that are completely synchronized with each other what do you think of that can you think of any problems with his understanding of the subject and his proposed solution so this video is

has received some criticism, including the fact that CGP Grey's ideas are misinformed and that the video promotes solutions to traffic which could in fact be very harmful. How?

So the video received a response from another YouTuber called Adam Something, that's the name of the channel, which was very critical of CGP Grey's proposed solution to traffic. I think it's important to also mention this side of the argument. So let's check out what Adam said. And here is the transcript for that video. But before we do that...

I need to make a quick trip to the loo. I'm going to go to the toilet. So let me just pause while I go to the loo. Because, you know, drinking lots of water, you don't just get input. You also do get output as well. So let me go to the loo and then we're going to read Adam something's response to CGP Grey. Here we go. OK. OK.

Okay, ready, let's go. So Adam Something's response to CGP Grey. Here's the transcript. Hello everyone, this video is a response to CGP Grey's painful take on traffic.

Now, I don't have an issue with CGP Grey or his content in general, but I do believe that his video entitled The Simple Solution to Traffic is wildly misinformed and propagates some very harmful solutions, both to people and to our built environment. I've put a link to his video in the description so you can check it out yourself and ensure I don't misrepresent any of his ideas. So let's get to it, shall we?

In the video, CGP Grey begins by laying out what he sees as the main problem with traffic coordination. He describes the scenario like this.

Stuck at an intersection, you always watch unfold the fundamental problem of traffic. On green, the first car accelerates, and then the next, and then the next, and then the next, and then you, only to catch the red. Had the cars accelerated simultaneously, you would have made it through. Coordination, not cars, is the problem because we are monkey drivers with slow reaction times and short attention spans.

Gray posits that traffic could be vastly improved if all cars could accelerate and decelerate simultaneously as if they were connected to each other. Oh man, so far this sounds dangerously, dangerously like a train.

CGP Grey then proposes his first practical solution. Just don't tailgate. Stay in the middle. That should fix the problem, right? Of course not. And CGP Grey acknowledges this. So props to him.

That's the simple solution to traffic. This is quoting CGP Grey again, getting humans to change their behaviour, perhaps by sharing this video to show how and why traffic happens, why tailgaters are trouble, and how we can work together to make the roads better for all. The end. Except, yeah, wishing upon a star that people are better than they are is a terrible solution every time.

CGP Grey then posits that we need a structurally systematised solution. Wow, you mean public transport? Again, quoting CGP Grey, which is exactly what self-driving cars are. Oh, and right here is the main point I'll be arguing against, that self-driving cars are a solution or even the solution to our traffic problems.

Within the framework of self-driving cars, CGP Grey proposes that once all cars become self-driving, we can finally get rid of intersections. Traffic will flow evenly and nobody will have to sit in a traffic jam. That being said, my question to you, CGP Grey, is how in the name of Christ will a pedestrian cross this?

This right here is my central issue with this video. It looks and sounds like it was made by someone who, if they want to go running, takes their SUV from their copy-paste suburban home to the strip mall 10km away, then takes the escalator instead of the stairs to the gym, then runs on a treadmill for half an hour. It's a terminally car-brained mindset, as if CGP Grey cannot imagine life without motorisation.

this becomes increasingly evident when he says, "A solid lane of self-driving cars vastly increases throughput." Neat. So if 20,000 cars passed under your window every day, it's now going to be 60,000. Yay!

CGP Grey then suggests banning humans from the road. Assuming this video refers to urban areas where clogged intersections are a problem, banning humans from driving ironically bans humans from roads physically, in the sense that pedestrians wouldn't even be allowed to cross at grade anymore. Wouldn't be allowed to cross anymore.

Off the road, peasant! You're messing up our perfect techno future car flow. How dare you disrupt traffic with your existence in this settlement where people live? If this dystopian nightmare, oops, I mean traffic solution, became a reality, we'd need to invest in costly underground and overground pedestrian passages.

These are exactly what cities are trying to get rid of because they're awkward, inaccessible to many and horrible to climb. For wheelchair users, older people or anyone with limited mobility, they are downright exclusionary unless we shell out for elevators. Shell out meaning pay a lot of money for them, even for able bodied people.

Even for the able-bodied, imagine spraining your ankle and having to climb 10 flights of stairs just to buy groceries. Turning urban areas into obstacle courses for pedestrians benefits drivers and makes everyone else miserable. This is peak 1960s city planning. And CGP Grey's video is from 2016, which is impressive.

Separating cars from people inside cities for better traffic flow leads to all kinds of negative outcomes.

I know this because it's been tried before. For example, look at the area in front of Prague's main station from back in the day. It was an archaic, low-capacity, inefficient design. But then future visionaries turned it into an eight-lane urban freeway with high-capacity, fast, grade-separated transit solutions.

Beneath this monstrosity is a network of underpasses that are awkward to navigate and downright dangerous at night. Sure, they solve the traffic problem if you don't count the free mugging experience they offer.

Underpasses and overpasses only benefit drivers. People argue they're safer for pedestrians, but they're only safe because roads are dangerous thanks to cars. And that's the crux of it. Cars are the worst mode of transportation, even electric cars.

Outside of pollution, the biggest issue is geometry. One car fits in a city, one million won't. No matter how well-coordinated self-driving cars are, they'll still back up if they don't fit inside the city, period. It's either a car-friendly city or a livable one. You can only pick one. Okay, so that's quite a kind of car...

sceptic, car sceptical response there, obviously. And, you know, you start to think of cities where the environments are built around pedestrians and maybe cyclists.

which is what happens in a lot of cities. And in Paris, the mayor of Paris has been trying to encourage that in this city and has received all sorts of opposition from people arguing that it's not working.

So, you know, just like with everything, you end up in some sort of ideological situation where you have people, it ends up being political, where some people argue that, you know, we should prioritise pedestrians and others saying we should prioritise drivers. And then there's the people who are saying that we're destroying the city by adding so many cycle lanes and this, that and the other. And then there's the people who don't want things to change and the people who want things to change and

Oh, dear. So let me go through. Let me just go through some of that again. Actually, I'll do it like I did before. I'll give a summary of that to make sure you've understood it.

And then perhaps I'll just point out some bits of English and then we'll end the episode. So this criticism of CGP Grey's video. The video claims that CGP Grey's solutions to traffic are harmful to people and urban environments. The focus on self-driving cars as a solution is seen as misguided and overly car-centric.

The main issues highlighted are the issue with coordination. CGP Grey's idea that simultaneous acceleration could solve traffic is compared to a train-like system deemed impractical, or at least suggesting why don't we just have trains or other forms of public transport.

Simply asking drivers to behave better is unrealistic, but CGP Grey does acknowledge this. Self-driving cars. The claim that self-driving cars can eliminate intersections is criticised for ignoring the needs of pedestrians, which is a fair point. If you've got these roads, these big multi-lane highways, full, absolutely packed with train-like numbers of cars...

And no intersections because they're not necessary because somehow the self-driving cars are able to coordinate and cross over each other somehow. How does a pedestrian cross the road? I suppose you could just walk through and presumably the self-driving cars would be able to stop. But that doesn't seem like a good solution, allowing people to just step into the flow of traffic. So you end up with like overpasses, underpasses.

Overpasses are things that go over, that pass over, like roads or bridges that go over. Underpasses, you know, things that go under and you think of tunnels and stuff. You know, we've seen them in major cities. You have these underpasses where the footpath goes under the road through a tunnel and it's kind of dodgy and a bit dangerous.

We've all had those moments where we've had to walk through an underpass at night and it can be a very dangerous thing. Banning humans from roads for the sake of car efficiency is described as dystopian and exclusionary. Dystopian meaning sort of like a vision of the future that is quite negative, quite dark. A dark vision of the future where...

Pedestrians are not allowed to walk in these car-oriented spaces. You end up with a kind of scary, dark 1960s version of a city. And exclusionary, that means that pedestrians, people, are excluded from these spaces. Grade-separated crossings for pedestrians, for example overpasses, are criticised as costly, inaccessible and inconvenient.

Yeah. Okay. And there are broader concerns. The impact on cities. Prioritising cars over pedestrians results in unpleasant urban environments, as seen in past city planning experiments like the one in Prague. High capacity car solutions still face fundamental issues of space. Cities cannot handle millions of cars, self-driving or not. And there was also the point of like, you know, 20,000 cars under your window become 60,000 cars.

Doesn't sound very nice. And then livability versus car friendliness. Cities must choose between being car friendly or livable.

And when we talk about livable, you know, we talk about the pollution issue, the accessibility issue of being able to walk around the city. And yeah, just the inconvenience of having to go up and down in order to get past roads. Self-driving cars don't solve the geometric limits of road capacity, just the simple maths of space availability.

So the conclusion of the video is the response argues that CGP Grey's video overlooks critical human and urban factors in favour of a techno-future car-centric vision. You think of those sort of images from the 1950s or 60s where you have these cities with all these different roads on different levels all going across each other and stuff. In the minds of the designers, this was like some sort of...

utopian vision but in reality it became urban spaces became filled with dark tunnels and corners which was dangerous cities became dangerous dark shadowy sort of places and

A better solution would focus on reducing car dependency altogether. So that's the solution to traffic, it's just that we should learn as a species to be less dependent on cars. We need to find other ways of travelling around our cities. Uh-huh. Okay, let me go through the article, I say article, the video transcript again. There are a few little bits and pieces of language that I want to just look at. So I'll do this quite quickly.

This video is a response to CGP Grey's painful take on traffic. Take is normally a verb, right? You take something, take a cup of coffee, take a cup of tea from the table. A take can be a sort of like an opinion. What is your take on this? What's your opinion on this? How do you respond to this? What's your response? What's your opinion? So this is

This video is a response to CGP Grey's painful take on traffic. His response. It's misinformed, apparently. It propagates or spreads some harmful solutions. Yeah, okay. I'm just trying to go through this quickly. Grey posits that traffic could be vastly improved if blah, blah, blah. If you posit something, you present it as your case. You sort of propose something.

You posit an argument, meaning present your argument as being true. So you posit an argument. In this case, Gray posits that traffic could be improved if all cars could accelerate and decelerate simultaneously. Decelerate, obviously the opposite of accelerate, slow down. Just don't tailgate, blah, blah, blah. Of course, CGP Gray acknowledges this.

So props to him. If you give someone props, it means you give them respect. Proper respect. Props. It's sort of informal slang term meaning respect. If you give props to someone, it means you give them proper respect. Mm hmm. OK.

CGP Grey then posits that we need a structurally systematised solution. Oh, you mean like public transport? It looks and sounds like it was made by someone who, if they want to go running, takes their SUV from their copy-paste suburban home to the strip mall 10 kilometres away. So this basically means...

The sort of person who, if they want to go running, they drive to a shopping centre 10 kilometres away. They take their SUV, that's a certain type of car, sports utility vehicle. It's like a kind of 4x4 car, like a bigger car, which could be four-wheel drive but probably isn't, just looks like it. Very normal kind of car design these days, the SUV.

Not necessarily the best for the environment, because I think the emissions that they put out is probably quite high compared to other types of car. So the sort of person who takes their SUV from their copy-paste suburban home. Copy-paste is what you do on your computer. You select text, you copy it, and then you go to another document and you paste it in. So this is copy-paste.com.

just taking one thing and pasting it somewhere else. So if you talk about a copy-paste suburban home, that means we're talking about homes, houses, which are just like based on designs that just get copied. You know, all the houses on the road all look the same. So he's criticizing the kind of worldview of the kind of person who would present this argument and

of self-driving cars being the solution the same sort of person who would live in this environment where they're driving the standard suv they have these sorts of copy paste suburban homes where driving is the norm you know as a way of getting about driving to the strip mall 10 kilometers away takes the escalator instead of the stairs so the escalator is the moving staircase

to the gym and then runs on a treadmill for half an hour. A treadmill is a running machine. So criticizing the kind of worldview of the sort of person who would do that instead of just getting out of their front door and running in their local area, they actually get in the car, drive, take the escalator and then run on the treadmill. So just criticizing a whole system, a whole worldview, which is a very sort of inefficient and very kind of wasteful system.

of things rather than, for example, finding some way of doing exactly the same thing that doesn't involve driving 10 miles using an escalator, going on a treadmill, maybe just running around the block or running to your local park or something.

it's a terminally car-brained mindset. Terminally means that it's ultimately going to lead to death, right? So if you talk about a terminal disease, terminal illness, it's one that is going to kill you. So terminally car-brained means it's a mindset which can only imagine having cars, you know? And there's nothing you can do to stop it.

CGP Grey cannot imagine life without motorization. This becomes increasingly evident. It becomes more and more obvious when he starts talking about solid lanes of self-driving cars. Okay, I think that'll do. That'll do. There's more stuff in there. You could research that yourself using the usual online dictionaries. But I think that we need to kind of wrap this up, actually.

So, yes, I have talked about traffic. I've talked about driving. I've talked about traffic jams, what causes them, what it's like being in traffic jams.

And then we looked at the CGP Grey video transcript describing automisation, self-driving cars as the solution. But the vision that he has for this is very car-centric. And for the pedestrian wanting to walk through the city, it's not ideal. And also, you end up with this kind of vision of a city which is designed around cars, and it's not very attractive and probably not very healthy either.

The response to that criticised it and said that essentially we need to find a solution which is where we just are not dependent on cars anymore. We're not addicted to cars. People can be dependent on drugs. We apparently are dependent on cars. We are addicted to them. We need them. We rely on them. We need to find a whole new system, a whole new paradigm where we find other ways of travelling around. Maybe...

emphasizing public transport solutions or just walking cycling or something else even electric cars because the electricity that's used to drive those cars is still produced maybe

with fossil fuels in some factory somewhere or some other system. And then, of course, there's all the batteries in those electric cars. It's not like a perfect solution. The batteries contain chemicals that have to be mined from various places. Those chemicals can be dangerous to dispose of.

Ah, dear, it's all very complicated. Anyway, let me do my ending and then we'll finish the episode and we can all go back to our normal lives. So the ending. Well, now that we've sorted out the whole issue of driving, traffic jams, overcrowding, pollution, city design and the urbanisation of everything and our dependence on cars, I suppose I should end the episode then. But joking aside, to end the episode, here are some final comments and questions and some questions for you as well. So conclusion and closing thoughts.

So after all that, what have we learned about traffic jams, self-driving cars and the future of our roads and cities? I'm not sure really, but I suppose it's something like this. Firstly, traffic jams are not just an inevitable part of modern life. They're often the result of small human mistakes and a lack of coordination.

This much is true. Whether it's someone hesitating at a green light, tailgating too closely or simply reacting too slowly, it's clear that we humans, with our slow reaction times and occasional daydreams about cheese, aren't the most efficient drivers. This is true. And we could all learn to just maybe try to avoid tailgating. That's one of the lessons. Yeah, so what I've personally have taken from this is that it's really important to keep the flow of traffic moving.

I personally always try to keep my distance from the car in front and avoid tailgating, not just because it's safer, but because I'm less likely to come to a complete stop if the car in front slows down, and this can help reduce the instance of traffic snakes.

Actually, I like to play a game when I'm driving where if there are lights up ahead or traffic is stopped up ahead, I actually try to slow down like really slowly. I never let the car stop moving. This is my game.

Let's say I'm coming up to some cars that are stationary in front of me. Instead of just like coming up right behind them and then just stopping at the last minute, I will slow down really early and try to let the car keep rolling as long as possible...

Never let the car come to a complete stop. Let it keep rolling very slowly until the cars in front start to accelerate and then I just carry on. That's my game. Never stop the car. Slow down early and just let it roll, right? Gradually crawl towards the car ahead and most of the time they start driving off before I get there and I can just keep rolling forwards and then accelerate.

That's my game that I like to play. I think if we all did a similar thing, we might get fewer phantom traffic jams, right? We might do. What about self-driving cars, though? So self-driving cars offer an interesting, even exciting potential solution. Their ability to communicate and coordinate faster than we can react might reduce congestion and improve road safety. There's also like moral issues that people often point out, you know,

Time to drink some more water. Moral issues like what happens if a self-driving car has to make a decision? Let's say in the road there is a child, but if the car swerves, it'll hit a bus stop with a bunch of adults there. So what should the car do? Should it hit the child or hit the bus stop with five adults?

That kind of decision is a moral decision that still exists anyway, because if a human has to deal with that, it also doesn't know what to do. But if there's an accident, who's responsible? So if you're in a self-driving car, it's driving itself. It's, I don't know, like Ford or Honda or something. It's a Honda self-driving car or any other car manufacturer.

and that car gets into an accident and kills somebody, who is responsible? Is it you as the owner of the car? Is it the company that made the car? Is it the people who designed the city? Who's responsible? So they're sort of legal, not eagle. Eagles? What about eagles? No one's mentioning eagles in this situation. Are they responsible? What if there's an eagle in front of your car? Are you supposed to just crash into it?

If it's an eagle and a child, what if it's a baby eagle? No, there are legal and ethical issues relating to this as well. But anyway, continuing here, it's going to be really interesting to see how this develops. Maybe they will really improve our lives. Maybe, hopefully. But as we've heard from Adam something, this isn't a silver bullet, meaning a sort of a perfect solution to the problem.

A future filled with self-driving cars could risk turning our cities into places designed more for machines than for people. And if we're not careful, we might solve one problem while creating others, like cities that are harder to navigate on foot and less welcoming for pedestrians.

So maybe the answer isn't just about better cars, but better thinking, smarter city planning, more public transport, encouraging better driving habits today, and perhaps sometimes just being willing to leave the car at home. And maybe that's the biggest takeaway. Whether it's driving, city design, or just life in general, the solutions we choose say a lot about the kind of world we want to live in. A world designed for cars, or a world designed for people.

So, final comments. What do you think? Got any thoughts rattling around in your head? Is your brain still working? Is your head still attached to your body? Are you a skeleton slumped over your keyboard at this point? I don't know. But what do you think? Are self-driving cars the way forward? Or should we be thinking about reducing our reliance on cars altogether? Have you seen a self-driving car? Would you be happy being a passenger in one?

How is traffic congestion where you live? What causes it? Do you have any ideas about this? Let me know your thoughts in the comments. I love hearing from you.

And if this episode made you think, made you chuckle just once or even just kept you company during a traffic jam, consider showing some support. Like, comment, subscribe and share the podcast. And if you're feeling generous, check out my premium subscription where you can get more episodes every month or you can donate via PayPal. So teacherluke.co.uk slash premium or teacherluke.co.uk slash donate.

But even if you just listened and enjoyed, that is enough for me. Thank you very much for being part of the journey in this episode. Right. And if you're looking at the PDF, you'll see a vocab list. We've got vocab in different categories, driving and cars, traffic and road systems. We have what else? Technology and autonomous vehicles, transport.

And civil engineering, meaning city planning and urban design as well. So a list of vocab with definitions and examples across the various topics that we've looked at. But that has been this episode of the podcast. I look forward to reading your responses. Thank you so much for listening. I will speak to you next time. But for now, it's just time to say goodbye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast. For more information, visit teachaluke.co.uk.

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