I think if you reflect a bit you'll find you are being the same kind of person as them, if you are getting angry that you have to slow down and give up space for someone else. I understand some people can be aggressive though, that can be frustrating regardless of the outcome.
We're not talking about where they're changing lanes to take the next exit. We're talking about where your lane happens to be moving faster, so they merge in front of you in an unsafe way to take advantage of that and just stay there. Why should you be expected to give them space, as you suggest? How is that fair, that they should get to their destination faster instead of you? Do you not see how that's going to rightfully make someone angry? When they should be waiting for a safe space to open up, rather than forcing you to slow down to create one?
If you choose to go in the fastlane in traffic you should understand that it will have people who do not care about the following distance as much and are just trying to go as fast as possible.
I have found that often times in heavy traffic the rightmost lane can be just as fast or actually faster than a middle or left lane.
It's not about choosing to go in the fast lane. It's about the fact that in heavy traffic, you have no idea which lane will be fastest, because they're all heavy and which one is fastest keeps switching.
> I have found that often times in heavy traffic the rightmost lane can be just as fast or actually faster than a middle or left lane.
That's exactly my point. Which is why you can be in the right lane, and tons of people from the slower lane will try to merge in front of you if you're keeping a safe distance from the car in front.
Your advice is staying in the right lane doesn't apply in these situations.
True, though-
I like being a traffic hacker--come on in, plenty of room!
If you personally start with that slower speed to begin with (AKA much longer following distance), you don't have to worry about adjusting down
This is correct, but I get the sense that people overestimate Y.
Let's say you're driving 60 mph and following the "three second rule" which gives you a ~264 foot safety buffer. A driver then cuts into this safety buffer. Let's assume they like to go fast and enter closer to the front of the buffer so they reduce your safety buffer down to two seconds. In response, you gradually rebuild the safety buffer back to three seconds, costing you an extra second. Soon after you rebuild the safety buffer another car cuts in front of you. Let's say this process repeats every mile of your journey, costing you an extra second every time. This results in you traveling slightly over ~59 mph, making Y = ~1 mph.
Compare that to the lifetime odds of dying in a car crash in the U.S. which is roughly 1 in 100. It's hard to eliminate that entirely, but I'm willing to spend an extra ~1s per car that cuts in front of me to reduce it for myself and my passengers.
Their old lane speeds up because many cars departed it
Everyone merges back to their old lane
You're back where you started.
Again we are not talking about the fastest lane here we are talking about the safest as the OP was concerned about following distance.
> That's exactly my point. Which is why you can be in the right lane, and tons of people from the slower lane will try to merge in front of you
If everyone merged right it would not longer be faster but people do not do this. In the right lane you can slow down as much as you want and never cause an issue so you can always make a gap. In any other lane if you slow down more than traffic you cause issues because people will then try and pass you from the right which is dangerous.
You are placing the burden of your forward following gap on the cars around you but that is a terrible way to drive. You need to be in control of yourself when driving, do not trust that someone is going to follow traffic laws, do not trust that they will go whatever way there turn signal says, do not trust that they will look over there shoulder before merging.
If YOU want a following gap then the only possible safe way to do this is to merge all the way right and slow down whenever someone merges in front of you. There is no other way to do it in heavy traffic. And YES you will have to live with the fact that you will be driving slower than the traffic around you. That's the trade you make if you choose to have a large following gap.
In my experience even cars that are not trying to go faster will happily merge in front of you unsafely all the time, just because they don't understand the concept of a safe distance.
There is no solution to traffic here sorry, this is more about managing your own frustration and expectations when faced with people at their worst, in the worst form of transport.
The total, confirmed, 100% effective solution is to never commute by highway during peak hours, but few get that option.
Everything I've read points toward larger margins of safety (longer distances, slower speeds) being safer.
See e.g. https://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/252480...
We don't live in an ideal world, and having a bunch of cars merging in front of you definitely makes you less safe than having a static situation. I try to make sure I can see through/around the car in front of me, so that I have advance notice of what's happening down the road.
For example, the specific law in California: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
Seems like this is the only place where the verge is in the inside.
Obviously fast and slow are just colloquial terms.
Still, I tend to find that people underestimate the danger of short distances. Often it's just better to accept a 100 cars going in front of you than to shrug off following someone at 1.5 seconds. It can go well for years because crashes are rare, but when you are in a crash you will be royally screwed when you don't have the reaction distance needed.
Simply put: follow distance is not a unilateral decision.
I'm still convinced people decide way too soon that the 3 second distance is more dangerous. You might be right if people are constantly cutting in the moment you leave a gap, but if someone cuts in every 5 minutes you're still safer off with the gap.
Ehto is correct and this is the way. I'll go further and say that if someone is tailgating you and it's pissing you off, generously let them pass. Literally pull to the side of the road if you must.
It’s safer to drive a little closer, keep up with other traffic and defend what gap you can in front of you.
Agree with your conclusion here, though. The best response is to simply not drive in this kind of traffic.
If traffic is very busy, the trick is to just accept people will wedge in front of you and keep going slightly smaller each time to increase the buffer again. You might create 'turbulence', which might possibly decrease the safety a bit for all the impatient drivers doing the wedging. But it increases your own safety. And therefore also that of the people following you and your passengers.
I'm also not convinced on the 'turbulence' part. Keeping a buffer smoothes out any sudden speed variations of the people in front of you, which makes the traffic behind you flow better.
And it might maybe feel a lot slower to let a 100 cars go in front of you on your commute, but just driving 99km/h when the person in front of you does 100 is enough to increase your gap and it makes a whopping 1% of difference.
The only thing is: sometimes a road is just too busy and the space for a buffer just isn't there to begin with. At that point the speeds should go down to accommodate the smaller buffers, which is actually what happens here in the netherlands as long as there aren't too many people ignoring the speeds advisory boards above the highway.
That's very obviously not true. Slowing down always reduces energy in the system and always reduces global turbulence. It's one of the reasons that countries that lower speed limits see journey times reduce.
We in Colombia had a public service announcement where it showed someone driving really fast (while still respecting semaphores), and another one going with just enough speed. In the end, they both reach the last semaphore almost at the same time and then they part ways. Essentially it shows that driving crazy fast in the city doesn't necessarily gets you faster to your destination.
Now that I'm an adult, I tested it several times, and it matches 90% of my attempts, but that's in the city, with semaphores. No way I'd think letting everybody steal everybody else's buffer would provide for a reduction in journey time, even in highways. You're adding items to a queue, it'll take longer.
Now, it is probably safer, but we can only take so much even if we are not in a rush.
I agree that slowing down "suddenly" causes turbulence. However, slowing down *gradually* allows you to build up a safety buffer which in turn allows you to avoid slowing down suddenly.
> Slowing down on a busy highway does not reduce turbulence at all,
The only thing that reduces global turbulence reliably on any roadway is reducing speed. All the simulations and real-world implementations show this. It's unambiguous and uncontroversial, except that it requires drivers to slow down, which is politically untenable in many jurisdictions.
There is, people just don’t want to hear it, and it isn’t a quick fix…
Build more of our towns and cities such that driving everywhere isn’t necessary.
I do think some don't appreciate that it is not an anti-car stance to wish for less car dependant cities. You still get to have a car, and commuting by car should be easier if you need it, since there is less demand on the limited resource that is the road network.
30 seconds later, so what?
Screwed person: WTF?
People doing the screwing: ‘oh thank god’
The really irritating part - society saying ‘oh, that’s not happening you should continue to be screwed’
Besides, there are only a few people who ever merge in front of me (and then those who don't merge block their lane so nobody else can get in).
But I guess we should just all self gaslight to feel better about it?
The most efficient throughput of the road system is not for people to “politely” queue up for 5 miles. People should be utilizing the rod and merging in an orderly manner. By adopting some arbitrary self imposed practice that is leading to 20 drivers cutting in front of you, are the one creating an unsafe situation.
Correct, but you _need_ the asphalt in front of you for both safe driving and also to avoid cascading hard braking events. I also don't own the asphalt under me or behind me too, so it's kinda a silly statement tbh.
This youtube talks about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE
If you do that and get angry when people change lanes in front of you, you have consciously or subconsciously decided you own that 20 foot gap. That reaction impairs judgement and causes accidents.
that's hardly safe when it's already tight with a safety buffer as it is.
provided they use a signal as required by law and taught in the drivers handbook, they'd likely be let into the new lane without any judgement.
Now you've just created a shockwave traffic jam.
The entire reason this happens is because 98% of people are morons who drive up the next guy's ass. If everyone kept a proper distance it wouldn't happen at all.
>> It's frustrating because . . .
> Slow down a bit to create another buffer
> I think if you reflect a bit you'll find
A third perspective may be "game theory." I think the Prisoner's Dilemma [0] could explain some aspects of the physical/mental problem. In the set below, Driver A's strategy isn't dependent on a singular predictable Driver B but all drivers that may perform the role of Driver B during the course of a commute.
Agent Cooperate Defect
Driver A leaves space doesn't
Driver B^n merge stay
I conjecture that this is a collective action problem and that above a certain traffic saturation point there must be a social taboo against changing lanes.
This is not to claim that individual perspective shifting is not important. I am reminded of Foster Wallace's Kenyon address "This is Water," [1] quoted below. However, the task of changing individual perspectives is vastly higher energy than the creation of a social taboo, which is why purity codes and other social inhibitors are so prevalent.
If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us
do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it
doesn’t have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. [...]
The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about
these kinds of situations. [...] [Maybe] the Hummer that just cut me off is
maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat
next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a
bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.
> someone is taking your safety buffer as their opportunity to travel faster
Nobody is 'taking' something; we're all just sharing the road, and at little cost. People change lanes for many reasons, and sometimes to pass someone else and travel faster. That's what the left lane (if we're talking about the US) is for.
> results in you having to travel slower and slower to maintain the gap that is constantly consumed,
I understand the theory but that hasn't happened in my experience.
And even if five or ten cars got in front of you, how much distance is that? A random Internet site says the average midsize car is 16 feet; add 220 ft safe driving distance at 75 mph (says another random website), so let's say 240 ft per car x 10 cars is 2400 ft. In that extreme circumstance, it will cost you ~30 seconds.
It's self-fulfilling: If you act aggressively toward other drivers, they will respond in kind. If you treat them respectfully and politely, they act the same way toward you. People behave well and kindly, naturally. We are social creatures.
It's the people who aggressively slide right over just a few feet in front of me (cutting off nearly all of my safety buffer) without so much as a signal that really drive me nuts.
When flows merge, there's turbulence. There's less turbulence if the flows are more closely matched, including speed.
In Austin if you want to merge, decide if you can, blink and then merge.
Don't expect people to stomp on their brakes and stop to let you in, especially if your already traveling slower than the lane you are trying to get into and decide to further slow yourself.
And if you can't merge, deal with it, exit, or miss your exit and go around. Next time you will be more prepared or you will learn how to properly merge.
So for the love of gods, if you're merging, even if you signal, match speeds for merging. If you're too slow to match speed, then suck it up buttercup, and hang out in the right lane until there's an opening.
I've had times where the right lane ends up being the fastest. On I-5 near Woodburn, OR, it's 3 lanes. So many drivers, including truckers, will often stay out of the right lane entirely to avoid being caught up in traffic coming on/off. Meanwhile, the left lane is going 5 mph under the limit because there's a left-lane camper somewhere miles ahead. So I can fly past everybody in the right lane because there's actually barely any traffic coming on/off and everybody is avoiding the right lane for no reason at all.
If they'd just drive 70 on cruise control, they'd be faster, less traffic jams and less fuel use...
I really would like to see some mandatory use of cruise control on some stretches of highway, even if just as an experiment
I much prefer cars with short gearing for better engine braking. I continue to choose to drive a manual party for better engine braking.
There are plenty of ramps on I5 and 205 that I merge to the left for because I know they will spill into the right and (when it exists) middle lanes. Because of how traffic also reacts to brake lights (some people brake too hard even when they have sufficient distance to let off the gas and coast to a slower speed) it seems like it ends up making my experience through those stretches a bit better.
Ultimately, any individual behaviour is largely irrelevant, it's what the whole mass of cars moving along does that affects things the most. Often you don't want to be the (significantly) odd one out regardless of the situation.
Would I love to see CHP or OHP fine every left lane trucker in the 'no trucks in left lane' zones? Hell yes, but until that happens, I understand the trucker behaviour.
The section of I-5 between Portland and Salem is absolutely psychotic, and I have never been able to reason out exactly why. It consistently has a left lane jammed with angry people going at or below the speed limit, a fairly normal center lane filled with cruisers, and a mostly empty right lane with the occasional big rig and regular very-high-speed cars expressing their frustration with the left lane by going 25+ mph over the limit in the right lane.
I know that's what you basically just said. Just venting. The driver behavior in that section of freeway confounds me, and I do not know what the underlying cause is. It is otherwise an unremarkable bit of interstate like any other.
Common misconception, actually.
There is not a single state in the USA where using the right lane to pass slower traffic in the left/center lanes is illegal. It is allowed everywhere.
Banning passing on the right only works if keep-right-except-to-pass laws exist and are thoroughly enforced. Most states in the USA don't have keep-right laws, and those that do, it's never enforced, so many people don't even know it's actually the law.
EDIT: US-26 westbound immediately outside downtown Portland is notorious for left lane campers. The limit is 50 mph, but without fail, there's some moron going 40 mph in the left lane. You wanna go slow? Fine, but do it in the right lane where you belong.
So the laws do exist, they just are never enforced. Even when said left lane campers cruise by state patrol, I never see them stopped. Hell, I rarely see them stop people going 15+ over the limit either so not actually sure what they're doing.
OTOH, most states have a stay right except to pass, slower traffic keep right laws.
Which means, that unless the person to your right is weaving through traffic, driving on the shoulder, or a few other bits of unsafe behavior, if someone passes you on the right your likely the one violating the law by not moving right when your not actively overtaking/passing someone.
Reasons vary, but a lot of the time it can be explained by left exits/splits ahead on the highway. Which some may call poor design.
When asked, they'll say they feel safer in the left lane because they don't feel safe having to deal with people turning out and merging. So you get instead people driving fast in the lane meant for pulling out and merging.
What I really hate, however, is that plenty of people will cruise in the center lane but still not leave a decent gap between them and the car in front. They effectively turn a three lane freeway into two one-lane freeways by hobbling the ability of anyone else to switch lanes. The freeway moves way smoother when there is a modest, predictable speed differential between each lane so that people can find their way into the next lane over without having to force the issue.
At 30 mph how much later will you be? 37 seconds.
I’ll take that trade.
At over 100 km/h that would be ideally 5m for a car and 70m for a safe distance between each one so 7,5km, which is 4.5 minutes at 100 km/h or 9 minutes at 30 mph.
You're ascribing motive where you have no data to do so.
> travel slower and slower
Roads near capacity slow down. This capacity surge is typically highly predictable.
> tragedy of the commons style, by opportunists.
People can only drive one car. They cannot drive two at the same time to get there twice as fast. I don't think this logic applies.
This exemplifies the problem with America. People will cut off their own welfare to make sure their neighbor doesn't get any either.