Man’s video of a phantom traffic jam on a Georgia highway shows the real reason you're stuck for no reason

This man’s video of a phantom traffic jam on a Georgia highway shows the real reason you’re stuck for no reason, and it is very frustrating to watch.

The clip captures a line of cars slowing down on a perfectly clear stretch of road.

Nothing is blocking the lanes, and there is no crash in sight, yet cars start slowing down, and the traffic starts backing up.

The video keeps rolling forward while the jam forms behind one driver for no particular reason.

What is a phantom traffic jam?

The video was recorded on the I-85 highway in Georgia, where traffic suddenly became a slow crawl with no obvious cause.

It looks like a normal day with cars driving as usual, when one begins to slow down, causing a wave of slow driving to pass through subsequent cars.

These moments are known as phantom traffic jams, and they happen when a tiny disruption snowballs into a full slowdown.

All it takes is one car tapping the brakes for a moment, and then the next driver reacts a fraction of a second late and slows even more.

Each reaction becomes slightly larger until the small dip in speed turns into a full wave of stop-and-go motion, and the irony is that the driver who caused the first tap is long gone by the time the jam forms behind them.

Scientists call this a traffic shockwave because the jam behaves like a traveling wave moving backward, even as cars move forward.

High traffic density makes this effect stronger, and once the wave forms, it can last for minutes or longer – and the example in the video above doesn’t last for long.

That’s why you get stuck for no reason

Phantom traffic jams like this are why drivers sometimes hit heavy traffic only to find a clear road a minute later.

The original disturbance often disappears before most people ever reach it because human reaction times and close spacing do all the damage, creating traffic jams out of nothing.

The Georgia video captures that moment perfectly, and it shows exactly why you sometimes get stuck for no reason at all.

Check it out above.

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