What causes stop and go is actually pressure waves that propagate backwards through traffic once density hits a critical point.

When everyone is following at a reasonable distance (ie, there's a couple of car lengths between cars), if someone has to hit the brakes for some reason (sun in their eyes, car cuts them off, etc), then the car behind can slow instead of stopping, and it doesn't propagate. Notably, the person who triggered the wave doesn't even need to stop. If the person behind them is following close enough, just slowing down a little bit will cause the person behind to slow _more_, and the person behind them to stop.

Once everyone is stacked on top of each other, any interruption in the flow of traffic propogates backwards. That's why when you get to the "end" of the traffic congestion it looks like people stopped for "no reason". But you've just hit the front of a pressure wave. You'll probably hit another one in a little while if density doesn't ease up ahead of you.

The only way to eliminate stop and go traffic is to stop people from entering onto the freeway after it hits a certain density.