that by knowing how traffic waves are created, drivers can sometimes reduce their effects by increasing vehicle headways and reducing the use of brakes, ultimately alleviating traffic congestion for everyone in the area.
increasing headway leads to diminishing the capacity of the travel lanes, increasing the congestion; however, disputed by acknowledging that similar principles apply to herding sheep through gates, and that in such a case, via human intervention, solitons are diminished simply by slapping "stuck sheep" and holding back aggressive sheep.
In funnelling sheep through gates it can be determined how much intervention is needed to curb bottlenecks.
The earliest theoretical model of traffic shock waves was offered by Lighthill and Whitham in 1955.
[3] The following year Paul Richards independently published a similar model.