9 Secrets to Surviving Summer Traffic Jams

Aug. 25, 2010— -- It's nearly impossible to fathom the massive traffic jam in China, now in its 11th day with cars moving about a half-a-mile each 24 hours.

Yes, you read that right, cars and trucks on a 60-mile span of highway in Inner Mongolia are moving slower than most people can crawl.

And yet there are no reports of road rage, no massive protests against road crews. The drivers' only complaint: villagers who are providing food and water to them seem to be price gouging.

"The thing that shocks me the most, is the way the drivers are handling it, their basic tolerance for it," said Tom Jacobs, director of the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology at the University of Maryland. "Folks here, God forbid they spend more than an hour in a traffic backup."

That's probably true. American drivers love to avoid gridlock, especially when heading out for a family vacation. So before you hit the road these final weeks of summer, we decided to ask the experts for tips to avoid traffic and what to do when stuck in that driving nightmare.

The easiest way to stay happy while in a traffic jam is to avoid one in the first place. That's not always easy, but technology is quickly expanding to assist motorists.

Before Jacobs leaves his office, he checks a desktop traffic widget on his personalized Google page that gives him real-time traffic updates for all the highways on his drive home. If there is a problem, he can pick an alternate route before even leaving his desk.

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Once in his car, Jacobs relies on the old – radio traffic reports – and the new – programs on his smartphone that provide real-time traffic updates. Supplement all of that with those highway message signs run by the state's department of transportation and he's up to speed with any delays, hopefully before hitting them.

"If it looks like it's horrible, I don't care, I will bail out," Jacobs said. "Invariably there's a local road, a rural road. Even if it means that I have to travel way out of my way to get around a particular event, I will do it."