obv: the driver would takes public transport instead

It would not be possible for everybody to be a Champion because then they would all be an Average with a few Bads messing it up for everyone else. When the highway is busy, the best road use for everyone is to all drive at the same speed. When someone cuts across a lane, the disturbance creates a "ripple" effect behind, and can even cause traffic to stop further back.

The best for other drivers is not to be on the road when they are.

@user138452 I have driven all over the USA and that is true. The behavior of some drivers, no matter where you are, is inexplicable.

Setting aside jokes etc, there is a (HUGE) amount of actual scientific research on exactly this issue. Simply see the answer by Franck.

"Traffic" is best viewed as a function of supply and demand. Supply doesn't change, but demand does throughout the day, thus, we have rush hours. Long story short, no. There is no optimal, since traffic is outside the design scope of roadways. This is like asking how to make your computer game stop hanging by playing differently, when what you need is different hardware.

That said, I don't see how this question is in this site's scope.

The problem with game theory is that most optimal strategies rely on everyone else following the rules and you not.

There are optimal ways to drive in any conditions, on any roads including on busy interstates though 'socially-optimal' passes me by. Optimal ways to drive have been for at least 50 years and are now being studied at huge cost by every name you associate with transport. Could you re-phrase re-phrase the Question?

@njzk2: Yeah, like my brother in law a couple of months ago. He traveled from Branschweig to Frankfurt, Germany by train. Rather, he tried to. The first train was delayed by an hour or more then canceled. The second train was late, then they announced that it wouldn't get to Frankfurt. I went to to pick him up at the closest station that it would stop at, then he called and said they'd changed it again so I had to drive to another, further station to pick him up. People are all "go public transportation," but it sucks and is unreliable - even in places where it is supposedly good.

@JRE Oh yeah, like the time I tried to go somewhere by car, but I couldn't because the car broke down / there was a traffic jam / parking was impossible / it cost me an arm and a leg / any random anecdote that illustrate that cars suck and are unreliable. What's your point?

@njzk2 I don't think you'll like the empirical comparisons between public transport and a personal vehicle. It's virtually always better to have a personal vehicle, and only when public transport is free (for riders, there's no free lunch) might it be personally worth it. Numerous public transport schemes in many cities are grossly underutilized because they just suck for most would-be riders and having a car is not that difficult nor expensive. So the point is that an "Oh, just take the bus" comment is intuitively false, but it'll save the world or whatever, so people keep saying it.

The best for everyone is to prevent everyone from driving, so the city builds a train.

@user27701 I do, in fact, like the empirical comparison. Here it goes: for starters, if I had a car, where would I store it? Then, the insurance alone would cost more than a comprehensive public transport pass. Then, literally all the trips I took in the last year were faster by public transport than by car. Finally, I don't want to have to focus on driving when I travel, I'd rather do something else. And of course the drivers have a free lunch: all the car infrastructure is used by private cars, and yet payed for by everybody else too. Car ownership is heavily subsidised, yet very expensive.

@njzk2 Wait a minute, you are all over the place: 1. You first make a broad universal claim "Take the bus", 2. then someone invokes personal experience to say that it isn't that great of an option, 3. then you criticize that as random anecdote. Fair enough. Then I suggest that empirically (a scientific term, ergo, a scientific claim) the evidence is not on your side. Then you respond with your personal anecdote, and a mostly false claim that car ownership is "subsidized" (and that's a "mostly" vs "completely" because I'm being charitable in assuming you don't mean literally subsidized).

@user27701 sorry if I misunderstood what you meant by empirical, that wasn't my intention. I don't think it can be simplified in a singe comparison, but I think in most cases you'll find that car ownership is very expensive for the owners of cars, and for society as a whole. However, if you're making the claim that there exists a scientific study on the broad comparison, I'm really curious to see it. Car ownership is subsidized: highways are a subsidy to car users (but often that's not seen as as much of a subsidy as building a railroad. I don't understand why).

@njzk2 The only areas where public transport has any hope of outcompeting private vehicles in within the high density spaces of high population cities. Everywhere else, the people and the things are spread too thin and the public transport just simply cannot service enough of the various places that people want to go. In those high density areas, one stop theoretically services dozens to hundreds of more shops and homes. In practice, few people actually live like that. Much of the traffic in these areas are from people who don't live there.

@njzk2 Highways and Interstates are largely paid by the federal government, because that infrastructure is vital to the economy. The transportation of goods is why, not the convenience of tourist and worker travel. Most other roadways are paid for locally via registration and gas taxes. Then there are toll roads, and some of them are privately owned. Then there are infrastructure upgrade fees, which are when a city requires Walmart to pay for the new intersection lights before they get permitted to build their new store. Roadways are socialized, and everyone benefits from it.

@user27701 the OP is commuting on a busy interstate highway. Surely that qualifies as high density space.

@user27701 (most countries don't have a federal government). The US federal government is still paying with US residents and citizens' taxes, including the increased maintenance due to the use from private cars. Walmart doesn't pay for renewing the road alongside their parking lot, 25 years after they settled in even though they continue to benefit from it. The US gas tax hasn't been raised to even follow the inflation in a long time. How are roads not as socialized as railroads? (also, yes, of course everyone benefits from railroads, including the car drivers from reduced traffic)