"A lot of people trying to move too fast in a huge crowd can be dangerous,"
"It's easier following the ones that are walking just to avoid colliding with people that [are] coming in the opposite direction,"
"As an individual, we can think and we can react,"
"But when we start increasing the density, sometimes it's difficult to do what we want to do because the crowd is there."
At Pamplona's El Sadar stadium, tens of thousands of fans exit together, creating dense, directed flows. Iker Zuriguel, an applied physicist at the University of Navarra, studies how individual decisions give rise to emergent crowd patterns like spontaneous lane formation. Individuals often follow strangers moving in their desired direction to avoid collisions, reducing perceived choice. Increasing crowd density constrains individual movement and causes physical forces to dominate behavior, raising risks of injury, trampling, and fatalities. Understanding granular crowd dynamics can improve flow, comfort, and public safety at concerts, pilgrimages, and sporting events.
Read at www.npr.org
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