Freeway Heavan

The place in the freeway that is most safe and provides greatest enjoyment of driving is dabbed by me as “Freeway heaven”. This place is special since it mostly occurs dynamically and unless you are trained to recognize it, you will totally miss your chance to enjoy it while it lasts. And let me stress that this place in time and space can be as brief as ten seconds and you need to learn to recognize it and utilize it to your advantage/enjoyment while it lasts. The beauty of this event in our world is that it is happening in a place that is centered on you and makes you the epicenter of an event that is uplifting as breeze of cool wind in hot summer day or unexpected kiss from beautiful woman. The dynamic nature of this event is from the fact that it happened while we are wheezing through freeway at speeds of up to 75MPH or higher. By this time you might be asking if this is really true and this place/event even exists or I am just pulling your leg. Let me assure you it does and I will do my best to describe, quantify and explain the phenomenon.

What is Freeway Heaven

The place in time when you are driving on the freeway at any speed and there is no cars hundred feet in front and behind you.  Significance of this event is that it lays in the core value of this magnificent invention called freeway, which is unbelievably expensive to construct, and in that moment of time it is all yours to enjoy. You can slow down or speed up or change lanes without even looking (although not recommended). There is no risk of collision at any speed and you can enjoy your personal space that extends several hundred feet, and live worry free for few moments in time. The life is good in Freeway Heaven. You are free, in nice environment, with no worries and no immediate danger driving towards your goals and taking this incredible vocation while whole world (at least the one around you) is trying to please you.

How is it formed

In Ancient times Archimedes pointed out that you cannot swim in same river twice.  Same thing can be expressed about Freeway Heaven. This entities pop in and out of existence centered around you and can have lifespan measured in tens of seconds. The basis for their formation lays in human social behavior. After all we have some animal instincts that force us to prefer social groups from individual or isolated behavior. Let us remember that even the harden criminals get broken if you remove them from all human contact by placing them in solitary confinement. If not broken then it is considered harshest punishment.

Now before jumping into conclusions where you argue that you are better than some criminal in this respect, let’s look closer into mechanism of formation of this phenomenon.

Let’s conduct a thought experiment, where freeway is empty and n cars enter it keeping safe distance from each other. The drivers in the front of the group are driving close to speed limit and they are subconsciously afraid to break from the group and enter into Freeway Heaven. Those are the drivers that drive fastest and they consciously are afraid of getting a speeding ticket. The drivers on the back are usually slowest drivers and they are subconsciously afraid to be left alone so much that they will even speed up to keep up with the group.

So if our assumption is right then this group of cars will be travelling in a formation governed by fear of getting a ticket and fear of being left alone. Now lest assume another m cars joined the group right behind them. At this time goop dynamics take their toll by sorting this large group where fastest drivers start passing slow drivers and slow drivers start slowing more to prevent accidents. This is almost like we have nicely sorted array of n numbers and then we introduced another m numbers to the array and then we run the sort algorithm again. At this point another behavior takes toll on our group. Now drivers feel crowded and they start avoiding the crowd each in their own way. This is also subconscious decision which is basic form of survival and it is based on the wisdom of avoiding crowded conditions where your chances of survival is lowered due to overcrowding. This is shown nicely in game of life where rules dictate that cells die off if they have more than two neighbors. The result of applying this group dynamics is that we will end up with two groups of drivers and there would be substantial distance between them. So from this we deduct that there is a magic number X where the group stabilizes and all the group members do not feel overcrowded.  Now let’s expand our model by dynamically adding and removing drivers along the route like it happens under real life conditions. Then we will notice that when the group goes over critical number X it will spawn smaller group and automatically place some distance between them. According to this model we will have groups of X cars traveling at some speed and large gaps between them. The gap in between is the freeway heaven.

How to enter Freeway heaven

 In this scenario you are the traveling gypsy, the hunter, philosopher to get into this space and enjoy the moments of tranquility that acts like meditation on your mind and body. So you love spending time in freeway haven then lets discuss the means to enter it and maintaining as long as possible. There is two ways to enter this phenomenon, by driving fast when you are in front of the group or slowing down when you are at the end of the group. Note that there is considerable subconscious pressure that will prevent you from entering this space and you need to realize where it is coming from in order to overcome it. When you enter the space between the groups, you should maintain your position as long as possible, by changing your speed to keep yourself in the middle of the two groups. Note that oddly enough that most of the time it will require you to drop your speed below speed limit to maintain your position. The reason for short life of freeway heaven is the instability you introduce to the system and additional cars entering the freeway. Once in a while your freeway haven gets disturbed by some driver oblivious its existence trying to pass you and join the other group. Don’t get distracted and maintain your position, since most of the time those events pass by very fast and you find yourself in the freeway heaven again shortly. When you are in the Freeway heaven you should take the middle lane and maintain your position as long as possible. After a while the freeway dynamics will change by new cars entering and sometimes traffic, ending short life of your Freeway haven. But just temporarily since you will actively scan for the phenomenon and enjoy your stay when possible.

Future is not bright for Freeway heaven...

When self driving cars become a rule, that it will be the end of Freeway Heaven since it is purely social phenomenon. The cold and efficient computer algorithms will deduct that Freeway Heaven is inefficient nu sense and should be sacrificed for increased freeway utilization. In the perfect word of AI the cars will have uniform distribution and will drive at exact same speed and keep similar distance from each other. I don't know about you but I will rather live in this imperfect times where I can hope to enjoy occurrence of Freeway Heaven in near future. Good luck discovering it your self.