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.
When you are fully alert, it leads to frustration , lane jumping and road rage. So I agree with GP that you need to mellow yourself down during long stop-n-go traffic. Not to the point of falling asleep on the wheel of course. But I don't think everyone needs to be combat ready either.
I can't wait for driverless cars. We are the ones who make traffic much worse because we have to have our own way.
Unless the field is heavily regulated, I imagine that car manufacturers are going to tune and market their cars according to their existing brand identities: safety, economy, performance, "thrill", and so forth.
It'd definitely be an improvement, but I also think it'll take decades to work out the kinks.
As a bonus, I get to feel superior to everyone not employing this strategy.
Seems to work better than sticking with a lane. Probably just the placebo effect, but I'll take it.
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?
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.
Self-driving cars are great because for the first time, you have a machine that commutes for you. There's no competition to get in the car, no competition to sit down in the car, and once the car starts moving, you don't have to care about how the car navigates the competition on the road.
It's true that on the large scale, it's less efficient than public transportation, but on an individual level, it's the best option.
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.
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.
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. "
It speaks to the fact that perception of moving faster does not match reality.
> 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.
[1] http://plus.maths.org/content/cars-next-lane-really-do-go-fa...
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.
I'm not sure whether my reasoning convinces my wife, or she just finds the left-hand turns inconvenient.
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.
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...
