Sometimes I pick a car in the next lane to track and compare my progress with. Although one of us will sometimes leave the other behind for a few minutes, usually we return to rough parity eventually.
Switching lanes in dense traffic does reduce flow and increase everyone's commute time. Cutting across a couple of lanes, exiting the road and then merging back in a few blocks later is even worse. If more people thought of driving as team-work rather than a race we'd all spend less time in traffic. This fellow argues that behavior that slows traffic down is a good idea because if makes him feel good. I'm sorry buddy, but you're an idiot. You're taking actions that do not benefit you and harm me because you lack the mental discipline to relax and stop treating traffic like a race.
Here is a suggestion for those of you who are currently like this guy but are willing to try driving smart for a change: Don't alternate days. Get into one lane and stay there and continue to do so for a couple of weeks. Listen to the radio. Think about stuff you need to think about. Zen the #$%^ out. Once you unlearn your moron-driver habits you'll arrive at your destination a lot less stressed out and you'll have the peace of mind that you're not one of the morons adding to the problem.
This guy did a fantastic mini-study of traffic wave systems, and has worked out techniques that go one step further than what your describing - actively cancelling out traffic jams by allowing cars to freely change lanes for a long distance ahead of you.
How about not going the route of "zen the #$%^ out." I prefer the drivers around me to be aware of their surroundings and conscious of their driving, not lost in dreamworld.
Here is a suggestion for those of you who are currently walking from place to place: Don't walk, run. Start running and continue to do so for a couple of weeks. Listen to music. Once you unlearn your moron-walker habits, you'll arrive at your destination a lot faster and you'll be healthier overall, and you'll have the peace of mind that you're not one of the morons adding to the problem of slowing down runners by walking in front of them.
What I dislike about traffic isn't the delay so much as the cognitive load. I will often take a temporally longer route if it means I am not constantly watching for lane-changers cutting in front of me and then suddenly braking.
This is why driving is exhausting. There's always a few people who, evidently lacking any real stimulation in their lives, feel the need to constantly jockey for positions on the road, endangering everyone around them for a mere ego trip. It seems like many of these drivers view their driving habits as reflections on them as a person; e.g. they cannot appear weak by yielding to others (even if yielding produces an optimal result, time-wise).
I can't wait for driverless cars. We are the ones who make traffic much worse because we have to have our own way.
I tell this story all the time to help clients understand that customer perception is more important than reality:
"SOME years ago, executives at a Houston airport faced a troubling customer-relations issue. Passengers were lodging an inordinate number of complaints about the long waits at baggage claim. In response, the executives increased the number of baggage handlers working that shift. The plan worked: the average wait fell to eight minutes, well within industry benchmarks. But the complaints persisted.
Puzzled, the airport executives undertook a more careful, on-site analysis. They found that it took passengers a minute to walk from their arrival gates to baggage claim and seven more minutes to get their bags. Roughly 88 percent of their time, in other words, was spent standing around waiting for their bags.
So the airport decided on a new approach: instead of reducing wait times, it moved the arrival gates away from the main terminal and routed bags to the outermost carousel. Passengers now had to walk six times longer to get their bags. Complaints dropped to near zero."
"Sasser (et al) provide good examples of both managing the perception and the expectation of waiting times. For the former, they offer the example of ‘the well-known hotel group that received complaints from guests about excessive waiting times for elevators. After an analysis of how elevator service might be improved, it was suggested that mirrors be installed near where guests waited for elevators. The natural tendency of people to check their personal appearance substantially reduced complaints, although the actual wait for the elevators was unchanged. "
Of course, the fact that switching lanes or not doesn't make a difference in how fast you get to your destination does not imply that everyone switching lanes doesn't make it slower for everyone.
The philosopher Nick Bostrom has an interesting view about this question, based on the selection effect[1]: if you consider your presence in the traffic as a random sample from "observation acts", then you are more likely to be in the wrong lane (and hence would benefit from switching), simply because it is denser, i.e. it entails a higher probability mass for obversations of that type.
What I do in crawling traffic is stay in 1st gear at a steady pace and stay in the same lane to reduce the annoyance of starting & stopping so much. You'll notice that large semi trucks do this too. It really benefits everyone if more people did this.
I often find that by moving right I pass a TON of people who shifted left in anticipation of heavy traffic ahead.. left lanes back up, right lanes open up.
> ... the act of changing lanes, and thereby briefly overtaking the car which up until a moment ago was in front of you, makes you significantly happier than just sitting there like a passive schmuck. Which is why we all do it.
> In other words, if you want to understand utility functions, don’t talk to an economist.
It seems like talking to an economist works pretty well here.
If I am executing a poor strategy that doesn't actually help me get my job done any better, I shouldn't be happy about it. Especially if I know what I am doing is ineffective.
If you know that the stay the lane strategy that you are executing is optimal and that the lane switching doesn't help, then you should just stop being so frustrated. The high intensity switching won't get you there faster. Accept it, move on.
I liked my nexus 7 tablet a lot. One day I dropped it, the screen was smashed, and it was useless. I was a tiny bit sad (essentially, I lost $200), but then I just went an ordered another and moved on. Because I knew about the sunk cost fallacy, I could just unemotionally do what was optimal.
You don't get it. The whole point is that the average person is willing to switch the time he might gain from not switching lanes with the happiness he gains from the appearance of progression. The "goal" of saving time on the way to work/home/other has value because people choose to give it value, and when they don't - it becomes meaningless.
> This is important: the really painful part of being stuck in traffic is not, really, the actual amount of time that it takes to get from Point A to Point B. Rather, it’s the “stuck” bit.
I've noticed this tends to not matter so much if you're not the one driving, more so if you're in the backseat. Self-drive cars anyone?
No thanks, I love to drive. Even as ridiculous as other drivers can be, I love to drive.
Driving brings with it challenges. Strategy, skill, timing, spacial recognition, etc. It also brings with it a pure feeling of freedom. I believe driving is under-appreciated and that leads to the terrible driving habits exhibited daily. Those who dont care, those who arent even driving but day dreaming, doing makeup, reading, using the phone, etc. It is under-appreciation coupled with lack of respect for being in control of a 2000LB+ piece of metal and fuel that can make driving seem like a chore rather than a joy.
Related observation:
I have an hour/hour-and-half commute, and I've noticed in particular that it doesn't pay off in any noticeable way to speed (~10-15 over) on the interstate. At best you shave off a few minutes, but those saved minutes can easily be eaten back up by traffic and traffic lights in the non-interstate parts of the commute.
I will only switch lanes when I can see what is causing the blockage. If it's an accident to one side, I get to the other. This avoids the mess of merging at the last minute.
Having tested this by noting the positions of large distinct trucks that I can see form a distance, I've noticed that I do get through the jam faster this way.
At one point I tried to do something like this on my commute (before I switched to using the train). I wrote a simple Android App which would plot time and position during the entire commute and I'd decorate it with 'all lane #1', 'all lane #2', etc. The idea was to plot the 'currents' which is to say which lanes were faster at which points of the commute. Needless to say there is a huge time dependency. There is also a 'kids' correlation where non-school days are faster than school days (which I found interesting). The train takes a bit longer (less than worse case driving, a bit longer than the median driving time) but being able to read totally makes up for that.
We have arguments in the car from time to time, for we live just north of a half-mile stretch of road that is is congested for most of the daylight hours. My argument is that switching to the street a couple of blocks over produces the illusion of progress, but no real gain. Sticking to the nearer road is obviously stop and go, but lacks a couple of bottlenecks further down, and is thereafter faster.
I'm not sure whether my reasoning convinces my wife, or she just finds the left-hand turns inconvenient.
Changing lanes makes sense when there is a substantive reason to do so. The other lane moving faster is not substantive; it's observation. If you have no idea why it's moving faster, you have no idea whether switching will help.
But if you drive the same route every day, it is possible to find inflection points in the traffic patterns, where you want to go one way and a significant portion of the traffic wants to go another. Optimizing around these points is a good reason to change lanes.
Switching lanes doesn't make me happy. Accepting the situation makes me happy. Angling for a few seconds benefit, dodging other anxious drivers etc makes me surly and unhappy.
It's not about getting anywhere faster. It's about not being trapped, and about having control of my own situation. Hell, I'll drive 12 hours rather than spend 6-8 dealing with airport bullshit, for precisely that reason. I want to be in control, and I don't want to be trapped.
[+] [-] panarky|12 years ago|reply
Let's say you have to drive 100 km. Half of the distance your lane moves at 100 km/h, and the other half your lane creeps along at 10 km/h.
So you'll spend 50 / 100 + 50 / 10 = 5.5 hours in the car, at an average speed of 18.18 km/h.
For every one minute you spend passing other cars, you'll spend 10 minutes watching other cars whiz by you!
Even though the fast and slow distances are evenly distributed, all drivers perceive that they're in the wrong lane.
[+] [-] ScottBurson|12 years ago|reply
Sometimes I pick a car in the next lane to track and compare my progress with. Although one of us will sometimes leave the other behind for a few minutes, usually we return to rough parity eventually.
[+] [-] beloch|12 years ago|reply
Here is a suggestion for those of you who are currently like this guy but are willing to try driving smart for a change: Don't alternate days. Get into one lane and stay there and continue to do so for a couple of weeks. Listen to the radio. Think about stuff you need to think about. Zen the #$%^ out. Once you unlearn your moron-driver habits you'll arrive at your destination a lot less stressed out and you'll have the peace of mind that you're not one of the morons adding to the problem.
[+] [-] yellow|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bashinator|12 years ago|reply
http://amasci.com/amateur/traffic/trafexp.html
[+] [-] luckyno13|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavelrub|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesbritt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattgreenrocks|12 years ago|reply
I can't wait for driverless cars. We are the ones who make traffic much worse because we have to have our own way.
[+] [-] dworin|12 years ago|reply
I tell this story all the time to help clients understand that customer perception is more important than reality:
"SOME years ago, executives at a Houston airport faced a troubling customer-relations issue. Passengers were lodging an inordinate number of complaints about the long waits at baggage claim. In response, the executives increased the number of baggage handlers working that shift. The plan worked: the average wait fell to eight minutes, well within industry benchmarks. But the complaints persisted.
Puzzled, the airport executives undertook a more careful, on-site analysis. They found that it took passengers a minute to walk from their arrival gates to baggage claim and seven more minutes to get their bags. Roughly 88 percent of their time, in other words, was spent standing around waiting for their bags.
So the airport decided on a new approach: instead of reducing wait times, it moved the arrival gates away from the main terminal and routed bags to the outermost carousel. Passengers now had to walk six times longer to get their bags. Complaints dropped to near zero."
[+] [-] edgarvaldes|12 years ago|reply
"Sasser (et al) provide good examples of both managing the perception and the expectation of waiting times. For the former, they offer the example of ‘the well-known hotel group that received complaints from guests about excessive waiting times for elevators. After an analysis of how elevator service might be improved, it was suggested that mirrors be installed near where guests waited for elevators. The natural tendency of people to check their personal appearance substantially reduced complaints, although the actual wait for the elevators was unchanged. "
[+] [-] lutorm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deeviant|12 years ago|reply
It speaks to the fact that perception of moving faster does not match reality.
[+] [-] cjauvin|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://plus.maths.org/content/cars-next-lane-really-do-go-fa...
[+] [-] kpapke|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsl7|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erobbins|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robrenaud|12 years ago|reply
> In other words, if you want to understand utility functions, don’t talk to an economist.
It seems like talking to an economist works pretty well here.
If I am executing a poor strategy that doesn't actually help me get my job done any better, I shouldn't be happy about it. Especially if I know what I am doing is ineffective.
If you know that the stay the lane strategy that you are executing is optimal and that the lane switching doesn't help, then you should just stop being so frustrated. The high intensity switching won't get you there faster. Accept it, move on.
I liked my nexus 7 tablet a lot. One day I dropped it, the screen was smashed, and it was useless. I was a tiny bit sad (essentially, I lost $200), but then I just went an ordered another and moved on. Because I knew about the sunk cost fallacy, I could just unemotionally do what was optimal.
[+] [-] pavelrub|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rojoca|12 years ago|reply
I've noticed this tends to not matter so much if you're not the one driving, more so if you're in the backseat. Self-drive cars anyone?
[+] [-] luckyno13|12 years ago|reply
Driving brings with it challenges. Strategy, skill, timing, spacial recognition, etc. It also brings with it a pure feeling of freedom. I believe driving is under-appreciated and that leads to the terrible driving habits exhibited daily. Those who dont care, those who arent even driving but day dreaming, doing makeup, reading, using the phone, etc. It is under-appreciation coupled with lack of respect for being in control of a 2000LB+ piece of metal and fuel that can make driving seem like a chore rather than a joy.
[+] [-] npizzolato|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muaddirac|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stronglikedan|12 years ago|reply
Having tested this by noting the positions of large distinct trucks that I can see form a distance, I've noticed that I do get through the jam faster this way.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cafard|12 years ago|reply
I'm not sure whether my reasoning convinces my wife, or she just finds the left-hand turns inconvenient.
[+] [-] snowwrestler|12 years ago|reply
But if you drive the same route every day, it is possible to find inflection points in the traffic patterns, where you want to go one way and a significant portion of the traffic wants to go another. Optimizing around these points is a good reason to change lanes.
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omerhj|12 years ago|reply
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/friday-night-mus...
with a followup here:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/life-in-the-slow...
[+] [-] drcube|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ape4|12 years ago|reply