This turned out to be one of the worst traffic jams in U.S. history. It is not clear to me why it was so bad. Explanations in the mass media do not add up --
Everyone went home at once. Yes, but they do that every day. The schools let out at the same time offices closed. That does not add much to the traffic. Kids go to school at the same time as office workers, but there is not much difference in the morning traffic in summer when school is not in session. It froze. Not until around 5 p.m. as I recall, and traffic was extraordinary around 2 p.m. where I live. The roads here did not have ice until then. They did later. This morning there were many abandoned cars in the neighborhood, parked on lawns and so on. Local roads become impassible. Not until 5 or 6 p.m. People started leaving at 1 p.m. Rush hour should have been largely over 4 hours later. Large trucks jackknifed and blocked traffic. This is the one thing that does seem to have happened on a large scale. I guess it was a sort of mass panic effect. There were some vicious circle feedback loops. There were problems such as blocked lanes which prevented sand trucks from getting through, which caused more blockage. - Jed
