全世界都在堵车,早上堵,晚上也堵,高峰期堵,非高峰期也堵。交通堵塞就像马路上的幽灵,无处不在,躲之不及,让你着急冒火却又无可奈何。但问题是,为什么会堵呢?没有碰撞事故,没有道路施工,没有交通管制,刚还觉得一切平稳、路况顺畅,可忽然——堵了!这究竟是为什么?
Can the careless actions of a single person leave behind2) no physical trace, aside from a troublesome traffic jam?
一个人的某种疏忽行为造成了让人闹心的交通堵塞,却未留下任何让人看得见、摸得着的线索,这可能吗?
The story is all too familiar. You’re on your way somewhere, when suddenly you find yourself stuck in traffic. It’s not a typical “rush hour” time of day and normally traffic does not get backed up3) like this. You figure there must be an accident or some type of serious incident up ahead just out of sight.
这种事儿太常见了。你正开着车前往某处,忽然发现自己被堵在车流中了。这并不是一天中典型的“交通高峰时段”,在正常情况下,这个时候的交通是不会拥堵至此的。于是你猜想,在前方瞧不见的某个地方,一定发生了交通事故或者某种严重的突发事件。
You slowly creep your way forward, bumper to bumper4), continually looking for the flashing lights of ambulances5) and police cars; the telltale6) signs of a roadway incident. Then, all of a sudden, traffic begins to move normally again. There is no sign of an accident, incident, or any other cause of the slowdown in traffic. What happened?
你缓慢地向前蠕动,前后车辆首尾相接,你不断地在寻找救护车和警车那闪烁的警报灯——那是表明道路事故发生的标志。随后,交通忽然之间又恢复正常了。而你却看不到发生交通事故或意外事故的任何迹象,也找不到导致交通变缓的其他任何原因。到底发生了什么事呢?
People all over the world encounter situations very much like this one everyday. Usually, these situations result in a string of various profanities7) and harsh accusations aimed at fellow drivers’ mothers and driving capabilities.
世界各地的人们每天都会遇到与此非常相似的情形。通常这些情形都会诱发一连串的亵渎言语和苛刻斥责,或骂同路司机的“娘”,或斥责他们的驾驶水平。
What causes these mysterious traffic jams that continually appear throughout the day for no reason whatsoever8)? Is it simply the fact that most people just do not have a clue9) how to drive? That’s very possible, and in reality there are so many variables involved in something like a traffic jam. But is it possible that the entire traffic jam could be both the continuing and end result of a chain reaction set in motion by a single driver who was in too much of a hurry?
这些神秘的交通堵塞现象整天毫无缘由地不断出现,到底是什么原因呢?难道仅仅是因为大多数人压根就不明白到底该怎么开车吗? 这很有可能,而且,在现实生活中,像交通堵塞这样的事情总涉及很多的可变因素。但是,有没有可能整个交通堵塞就是由一位太过匆忙的司机所引发的连锁反应导致的系列后果和最终结局呢?
Let’s examine one possible scenario:
让我们来研究一下可能存在的一种情景:
It is a clear, sunny day and the roads contain no obvious hazards that would cause problems with traffic. Traffic on this particular highway is pretty thick, but it is flowing smoothly and steadily. One of the drivers, let’s say a man in a red car, decides that people in his lane are moving much too slowly for his taste. He quickly changes lanes in an attempt to get to a quicker moving lane. He fails to properly check his mirrors and cuts off another driver in the lane beside him. This forces that driver to apply his brakes to avoid getting clipped by the red car.
这是一个阳光明媚、晴朗无云的日子, 道路上没有任何明显会导致交通堵塞的危险物。在这条特定的公路上,车流非常密集, 但交通运行平稳顺畅。其中的一个司机——我们假定他是一名开着红色轿车的男子——认为与他同车道的司机开得太慢了,不合他的嗜好。于是他迅速变换车道,试图插到另一条更快的车道上去。但他没有仔细观察后视镜, 因而阻断了旁边车道上另一名司机前进的道路。这迫使那名司机急踩刹车,以免被红色轿车撞上。
There is no collision10), and the man in the red car continues on. The driver who was forced to use their brakes has now slowed a bit, causing the driver behind them to apply their brakes as well. In turn, the person behind them must hit their brakes as well. Human reaction time being what it is, each subsequent time that someone has to hit their brakes, it becomes increasingly more sudden; eventually leading drivers farther down the road having to slam11) on their brakes and come to a complete stop to avoid rear ending the person in front of them.
两辆车并没有发生碰撞,开着红色轿车的司机继续向前行驶。而那名被迫踩刹车的司机现在的速度放慢了一点, 这就导致尾随他之后的司机也得踩刹车。依次地,跟在他们后面的司机一个接一个地也必须踩刹车。无论人类的反应速度如何,每一次后面的司机被迫踩刹车时,都会比前一辆车刹得更突然,越往后越如此;最终导致在路后面更远些的司机不得不奋力猛踩刹车,使车完全停下来,从而避免撞上前面车辆的车尾。
As a result of this standstill12) in that lane, drivers begin to change lanes to move to one of the other lanes that are moving properly. As this occurs, the other parallel13) lanes begin to slow as people are merging over. The same process repeats itself in the other lanes until the entire highway has slowed to a crawl and eventually a complete stop.
那条车道上的车就此停滞不前,于是司机们开始变换车道,将车开到正常通行的其他车道上。当这样的事情发生时,其他平行车道上的车由于司机们的并道也开始放慢速度。诸如此类的连锁反应过程在别的车道上不断上演,直至整条公路的车都只能缓慢蠕动,最后完全停滞。
If the traffic on the highway remains dense and constant, this chain reaction could continue to travel back for miles and could last for an indefinite amount of time. The man in the red car who was in such a rush may already be home now. He may have sat down on his chair, opened a cold can of beer, and began watching television; while hundreds of drivers are caught in the traffic jam that his actions created.
如果公路上的车流一直很密集的话,这种连锁反应可能绵延数英里,并持续无限长的时间。而那名开着红色轿车的男子现在可能已经到家了。他可能已经坐在椅子上, 打开一听冰镇啤酒,开始看电视了;而成百上千的司机却困在了由他的行为所引发的交通堵塞中。
This scenario was once referred to as the “ghost of a traffic jam” by Hannah Holmes, a columnist for Discovery Online, in a lighthearted article on the subject. An occurrence such as this is considered by many to be a plausible theory and a probable cause of many of the traffic jams we experience everyday.
“探索在线”的专栏作家汉娜·霍姆斯曾经在一篇轻松短文中把这种情景称做“交通堵塞的幽灵”。很多人认为,类似这样的情景所反映的是一个看似有理的理论,也是我们每天所经历的多数交通堵塞产生的可能原因。
The scenario is seated in a theory of Chaos and Non Linear Dynamics. It is similar to the principles of the “domino effect” and the “butterfly effect”. The “butterfly effect” leads to a conclusion that if a butterfly flaps its wings, that small disturbance14) in the chaotic motion of the atmosphere could create a chain reaction, amplifying the effect to that of a large atmospheric motion capable of altering the weather in another part of the world. The “butterfly effect” illustrates the impossibility of making predictions for complex systems.
这种情景属于混沌和非线性动力学理论的范畴。其与“多米诺效应”和“蝴蝶效应”的原理类似。根据“蝴蝶效应”,我们可以得出这样一个结论:如果一只蝴蝶扇动翅膀, 其在无序流动的空气中引起的小干扰能够引发连锁反应,这使它对大气运动的影响扩大到能够改变世界某个地方的天气的程度。“蝴蝶效应”表明,对复杂系统做出预测是不可能的。
This sensitive dependence on initial conditions is the essence of the Chaos Theory. Our scenario could also be loosely described in terms of a “domino effect”, but the “domino effect” relies on a linear series of identical events. The “butterfly effect”, however, seems to fit our scenario better as it insists that the effect amplifies the condition upon each iteration15). In our example of the traffic jam, the effect was amplified each time as drivers were forced into an increasingly stronger, more abrupt action, resulting in a slowdown and eventual standstill.
这种对初始条件的敏感依赖性是混沌理论的精髓。不严格地说,上面的交通堵塞情景也可用“多米诺效应”来形容。但是,“多米诺效应”依赖于单一的一系列等同事件。而“蝴蝶效应”似乎更适合上面的情景,因为它坚持认为,微小干扰的每一次重复都会扩大其产生的影响。在这起交通阻塞的例子中, 当司机们被迫采取越来越猛烈、越来越突然的刹车行为时,其影响也在不断扩大,最终导致公路车速减缓并最终停滞。
All of this could also lead to additional amplified variables. Car accidents could have been caused by all of this action and reaction, leading to more traffic and events as emergency vehicles are rerouted to the scene of the accident. Some drivers may have taken a different exit than normal to avoid the traffic, leading to increased traffic and incidents on side streets; spreading the condition beyond the confines of the original highway. This would begin impacting traffic and people’s lives all over the city as more actions and reactions result from the original traffic jam. Each reaction led to another reaction creating an end result that was impossible to predict.
所有这一切还会导致其他可变因素的变数增强。司机的这些行为和反应可能引发车祸,进而导致更堵塞的交通和更复杂的事件,因为紧急救援车需要绕道进入事故发生的现场。有些司机可能会改走与平时不同的出口以避免交通堵塞, 这会增加边道的交通负担和意外事件发生的概率,使得堵塞状况一直蔓延到最初发生堵塞的公路区域之外。这将会影响整个城市的交通和人们的生活,因为最初的交通堵塞会引发各方更多的行为和反应。每一个反应都会引发另一反应,最终导致一个让人无法预料的结果。
It’s possible that both theories have some place in describing a situation such as ours. It’s also entirely possible that neither can accurately describe the sequence of events. Many of the events may have occurred without the presence of our “man in the red car”. It’s also possible that if traffic hadn’t been following so closely behind the people forced to brake suddenly, the resulting traffic jam would never have happened. As much as we try to calculate and theorize “chaos”, it is still “chaos”. The long term effects and resulting behavior will become impossible to forecast.
或许这两种理论都能在一定程度上描述我们所讨论的这种情景。但或许这两种理论都无法精确描述这一连串事件的发生——这完全有可能。即使没有“开着红色轿车的男子”出现,其中的很多事件仍然可能发生。假如后面的车辆不那么紧跟着前面被迫突然刹车的人,交通堵塞也可能根本就不会发生了。尽管我们不厌其烦地试图估算“混沌”并将其理论化,但它仍然是“混沌”一片。其长期效应和引发的行为将变得无法预测。
So the next time you find yourself stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, it’s very possible that the jackass that caused it is already at home watching the latest episode of American Idol; while you sit in traffic with nothing to do but ponder the finer points of non linear dynamics.
因此,下一次当你发现自己陷入了拥挤不堪的交通堵塞时,要知道引来这场“横祸”的那个混蛋早已经在家观看最新一期的《美国偶像》了;而你呢,只能坐在车里,除了思考一下非线性动力学的细节问题,什么也干不了。
1. Chaos:这里指混沌理论(Chaos Theory)。混沌理论认为,在混沌系统中,初始条件十分微小的变化,经过不断放大,会对系统的未来状态造成极大的影响。
2. leave behind:留下,遗留 3. back up:(使)淤塞,(使)停滞
4. bumper to bumper:车辆首尾相接;bumper [5bQmpE] n. 保险杠
5. ambulance [5AmbjulEns] n. 救护车 6. telltale [5telteIl] adj. 泄密的,警告的
7. profanity [prEu5fAnItI] n. 亵渎的语言,滥用的、粗俗的或不敬的语言
8. whatsoever:用于“no+名词、nothing、none等”之后,起加强语气的作用。
9. not have a clue:什么都不知道,毫无头绪 10. collision [kE5lIVEn] n. 碰撞,冲突
11. slam [slAm] vi. 猛力撞击 12. standstill [5stAndstIl] n. 停滞,停顿
13. parallel [5pArElel] adj. 平行的,类似的 14. disturbance [dIs5tV:bEns] n. 骚动,骚乱
15. iteration [7ItE5reIFEn] n. 反复,重复