I hate it so much when people do that with their cars. It just makes the traffic jam much longer than it needs to be, possibly even extending it over the previous exit. It's not rational, it's just plain stupid and annoying.
Depends. Bigger gaps mean the traffic jam will get better faster since it reduces the stop and go. Ofc the gaps need to be reasonable but the people driving bumper to bumper make it even worse
If everyone followed the one rule "keep as much space in front of me to the next car, as there is behind me to the next car, at all times" it would do the most to alleviate most traffic jams.
Yeah, it's really fun trying to "fix" minor traffic jams by holding back a while then moving forward very slowly.
If you time it right you never catch up to the car in front, because they reach the front of the queue before you reach them. Then there's no traffic jam left behind you, because everyone is moving.
I'm kinda in between. When the car in front of me drives off and stops I'll creep slowly with my car 50% of the time I can keep a slow pace without start and stop.
That's not a problem, in fact it even helps the flow. What I meant was when folks keep an excessive distance to the next car, like in the OP (that lady could advance like, 10 places or so, translated into car lengths that would be 50 meters).
There are people who literally turn off their engine and don't start it again until they can go for 100 meters or more. This wastes road space and encourages lane-hopping, which also makes the traffic jam worse.
Trucks sometimes do this in major traffic jams because if you create a large enough gap and do a slow roll to close the gap, you can actually more rapidly kill the traffic jam. They get together and form a consistent gap and restart traffic at a consistent pace.