system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Traffic jams are often caused by incompetent drivers. CMV.

I am convinced that many, if not most, traffic jams are caused not by traffic volume but by incompetent drivers reacting inappropriately to traffic situations.  I just refuse to believe that traffic jams are inevitable in high traffic flows.  I think that the three main causes would probably be people driving too slowly in the passing lane(s) and thus not letting traffic through, or by opening up a huge following gap in traffic because they're feeling nervous, or overreacting to someone putting their brakes on in front of them and thus causing a chain reaction.   CMV.

EDIT:  To clarify my thoughts further: Fluctuations in speed are really what cause traffic jams.  My contention is that human incompetence is to blame for the vast majority of fluctuations in speed.

EDIT #2:  I understand what happens when cars start slowing down, I understand the impact that has all the way back.  That's not up for debate.  My point is the root cause of the slow down to begin with.  Why do the cars have to slow down?  Discount things like accidents (most of the time you will see evidence of this when it's the cause) or other forms of obstacles in the road.  Someone here posted a really good video of what happens when it's just a bunch of cars going around in a circle.  There was no obstacle but they ended up clumping up anyway.  I think that experiment was set up to fail because they're forced to follow each other too closely and they're not race car drivers.  I still believe that a huge portion of traffic congestion is caused by people doing things they shouldn't be doing and that they could easily avoid doing if they were just paying more attention (and sometimes it's just ignorance).  One area that I'm willing to concede a change in view is  that bottlenecks do play a much bigger role when it can appear there is no cause to the slowdown.  It's undeniable that squeezing more traffic onto the highway in already dense conditions is going to cause a slowdown even if everyone is driving well.
gpt
Technically, you're right. Traffic jams are caused by a lack of competence.

But the level of **competence** required to prevent them in dense traffic is beyond human levels.

Even a split second error can cause a ripple. If the traffic volume is low, this ripple will dissipate; no harm done. But with a high density it just keeps growing until something disrupts it.