In a 2008 experiment, Japanese researchers recreated "shockwave" traffic jams, where congestion appears spontaneously without an accident or bottleneck. A team of 22 cars drove in a circle, and despite drivers trying to maintain a consistent speed, slight variations created a ripple effect of braking that caused a stop-and-go jam. The experiment proved that human driving behavior alone can trigger these phantom jams, with the backward-traveling wave of congestion mimicking real-world traffic. Cr