RUSH-HOUR traffic jams are a daily bind for many commuters - but are drivers making them worse by trying to avoid them?

A study of four major world cities has found drivers in peak-time traffic often avoid taking the shortest route to their destination.

Drivers may think the most direct route will be too congested or have too many intersections or traffic lights to be the quickest.

But analysis of rush-hour traffic patterns in four major cities by Strathclyde University researchers show drivers following strange patterns.

Professor Ernesto Estrada, who conducted the study at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics with colleagues from Isfahan University of Technology in Iran, said: “We found that rush-hour traffic in major cities across the world follows a strange and counterintuitive pattern.

“Instead of drivers navigating the city by using the shortest paths to their destination, they travel in a diffusive way.

"Our study suggests drivers perceive the shortest routes as ‘too central to be empty’ and avoid taking them altogether.

“It may be true the quickest route to a destination is not via the shortest path, but when everyone decides this and takes alternative routes making them more congested than the shortest route, does that still hold true?

“Because drivers mainly rely on cognitive maps they have previously created to navigate the city, they end up using the same routes to get to their destination.

"The result is the creation of what we call ‘communicability’ routes that become more congested than the shortest path and possibly we will have to wait more due to congestion than to traffic lights, signals and intersections.”

The study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, provides insights into how information flows along complex networks and could help city planners tackle traffic congestion.