Correction: I thought I read “road sign” is to be blamed for bad traffic when it’s actually “road Design”. My bad.
Sure there are certain roads that are badly designed, especially those where cars are coming on ramp and off ramp on the same lane, forcing dangerous lane merging between two flows of traffic that are trying to do the opposite. I have no idea who approves designs like that, but it’s everywhere and I simply try to avoid using those ramps.
Once I had to drive on a 4 lane road where they laid the tarmac but haven’t painted the lane lines yet. It was at night, absolutely chaotic. No body knew where they should be driving. Getting from one side of the road to the other was extremely stressful, and something as simple as maintaining a steady speed was hard because there wasn’t a lane(which automatically regulates the speed for that lane). I was glad it wasn’t long.
I don’t think M914’s reasoning is the MAIN reason. However it’s a big factor. Keeping a constant distant between cars may be harder than what people think. When the driver behind suddenly realizes that he’s closer than he thinks, he hits the brake and that action passes down. Here, there is a scary amount of drivers on cell-phones. I bet that has to a lot to do with the notorious traffic jams here.
TruTV recently had a show called “Driving me Mad”. All drivers should watch it.