What is a phantom traffic jam?

Jan 10, 2011 English 1st Paragraph

Here are some words and expressions to help you understand the video better:

• A traffic jam is when a large number of cars are very close together and cannot move or move very slowly.
• A phantom is a ghost (= a spirit of a dead person) or something that appears to exist but may not be real.
• weekend trippers are cruising their way…: people who go on trips at the weekend are moving at a continuous speed without problems
• It’s all about to go hideously wrong: This (apparently good) situation is going to become very bad. [hideous: very ugly, very bad]
• A car has three pedals: the accelerator or gas pedal (for making a car go faster), the brake pedal (for stopping or slowing down a car), and the clutch pedal (for changing gears).
• taillight: the (red) light behind a car that lights when you brake
• It’s not the usual rush hour standstill when you just sit there steaming: It’s not the usual kind of traffic jam that you have during the busy hours of the day when cars stop completely and don’t move and you just sit in your car angrily without being able to do anything.
• fits of movement: short periods of movement
• chaos: complete confusion and disorder
• unpicking the mysteries of…: examine the mystery part by part (and try to understand it)
• A bird’s eye view of something is a view from a very high place (like the view that a bird has when it is flying).
• the merger of the M5 and the M6: the M5 and M6 motorways (= highways) joining together and becoming one road
• too many cars and lorries, not enough tarmac: too many cars and lorries, not enough road surface. [The tarmac is the area of a road covered in tarmac, i.e. the black material used for building roads which is a mixture of tar and small stones.]
• the whole motorway has ground to a halt…: the whole motorway has slowly come to a stop
• Eddy and his fellow motorway gurus: Eddy and other people like him who have a great knowledge of how motorways work. [A guru is a person with a lot of knowledge of a particular subject who gives advice to other people.]
• A big road, such as a motorway is usually divided into parallel bands or strips, called lanes, which are usually separated by some white lines and help keep cars separate.
• once the motorway lanes have become clogged with stationary traffic: when the motorway lanes are blocked and closed by cars that are not moving
• the jam itself doesn’t vanish: the jam itself doesn’t quickly and suddenly disappear