h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Surely there must be a whole sub-category of driving sins - it's impossible to drive even the shortest of journies without seeing another driver do something annoying and/or dangerous. Like...


when you've pulled into the slow moving slip lane on the left to get off at the next exit, but someone "considerably more important than yaow" stays on the motorway until the last possible moment and then barges into the exiting traffic lane

when someone sits at 50 mph in the fast lane and refuses to move over into the (needless to say) empty left lane

not stopping when the traffic lights have just turned red

parking in a bus stop

In response to point (1) above, when the motorway goes from 3 to 2 lanes, the quickest and most efficient way to get traffic through is for the three lanes to be full until the last moment. Fact.

However, if you have the temerity to actually drive forward in lane 3 to the end of the lane, one self-righteous moron after another will risk a collision to prevent you filtering in, presumably because you've "jumped the queue".

That is, of course, assuming some knuckle-dragging truck driver hasn't decided that in fact the third lane ends at his truck, which he deliberately straddles across two lanes to prevent efficient filtering. They really ought to put up signs saying "USE ALL THE LANES UNTIL THE END" and "LANE 2 DRIVERS - LET IN ONE CAR EACH". Traffic queues would be shorter and move faster, and accidents could be reduced.

People doing 50mph in the middle or fast lane are no problem, simply overtake on the inside. Technically illegal, but if they're driving properly it should be impossible. My own favoured solution, so as not to break the law by overtaking on the inside, is to pull to the left, draw alongside them... and sit there. Don't actually overtake them, just be eversoslightly in front of them and to their left. Freaks them out, big style. Assuming of course that they're paying ANY ATTENTION AT ALL to the world outside their car, which in my experience they are doing about 50% of the time. The other 50% wouldn't notice if you actually rammed them, I suspect.

3 lanes to 2, agreed, but I'm talking about when you're approaching a junction or a roundabout, and it's clear that the lane on the left is for those turning left, and the lane on the right for those turning right.

Anyway.

Another sin - abuse of disabled parking bays.

Actually, queuing theory will tell you that maximum throughput is obtained when *the whole* is moving smoothly with reductions in speed of individual vehicles is kept to a minimum. Each car should slow just enough to let another one in.

If everyone tries to filter in at the last minute, you get a bottleneck where there needn't be one. The bottleneck will cause *all* traffic at that point to slow down much more than it needs to, thereby reducing the overall flow rate.

Of course the same thing will happen if everyone is ultra-polite and tries to filter in as soon as they see the sign. The ideal is somewhere in the middle, and the tricky part is to get everyone to do it gradually.

But yes, as soon as I saw the question I immediately thought of driving. Where else do you see such ubiquitous immoral behaviour, such reckless regard for the lives of others and such trivial penalties for killing? If anything can be regard as 'evil' this is it.

I think it all boils down to the feeling of isolation we get once we get into a car. We do things we would never do to another person walking on a sidewalk. We put on our armour and lose all connection with other people outside the vehicle. Everything from cutting people off to sticking a finger up one's nose happens since we are now *invisibly* tucked inside a steel box. Not to mention that because we *can* go fast, we should and no one else knows how much of a hurry we are in.

Sorry to have to disagree, Dave, but the safest, quickest, easiest, and most polite way to handle merging traffic is for all lanes to simply continuing to move to the convergence point and politely taking turns moving through.

Less frustration, less friction, less grumbling about people passing them by.

By filling empty lane spots, no one can feel abused; and by taking turns, it becomes a first-come first-served process.

(Although I'm still not sure that this particular problem rises to the 'sin' level.)

You could be right about it being the the fairest, easiest maybe, and given the fact everyone would be going much slower when they merge, it might even be the safest. But it's not the quickest. It's a very popular myth, but it's just a myth I'm afraid.

If everyone merges at the same point, everyone has to slow down relatively suddenly at that point. In practice, all traffic usually comes to grinding halt at the choke point. Everyone has to brake, and the wave of braking extends backwards until a queue develops. If, however, everyone merges smoothly and in turn, no-oone has to slow down by very much and the single lane of traffic is already moving at the correct speed when it hits the choke point.

There's a reason why they use those signs saying 'merge in turn'.

You may well be right about it not necessarily being 'the quickest', Dave. Still, I'm not sure that any other solution is quicker.

Let's take a two-lane down to one-lane scenario. The one-lane is now 2 miles long before it widens up again. If the lane is full up, bumper-to-bumper, for the entire two miles, then neither way is faster. you end up with the same number of cars exiting at the same speed no matter what order you put them in.

If anything might make one method quicker than the other, at least anecdotally, it would be avoiding an accident that buggers up the flow even more. I believe that the polite 'take your turn' at the end is least likely to cause an accident, when compared to the frustration and road rage that can occur in scenarioes where one lane is zipping ahead of the other.

That, imo, IS 'merge in turn'.