Driving Through Traffic and Into the Past

As we noted earlier via Twittter, we are currently reading Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do (and what it says about us). Halfway through, Vanderbilt makes the rather poetic notion that driving in traffic (as opposed simply driving) is driving into the past. He says this based on the observation that each driver is reacting to an event that has occurred in front of them, driving towards the event horizon so to speak, while at the same time the locus of that horizon expands outwards to engulf more and more traffic, much in the manner that the light of stars now reaching our eyes burnt out millions and millions of years ago.