Laws of physics not cool
It drives me crazy how normalized dangerous driving is.
Road safety campaigners have accused the UK home secretary of trying to downplay the dangers of speeding after she reportedly requested a private speed awareness course after being caught driving over the speed limit.
Bad writing. You have to read the whole piece to understand that she requested a private course instead of a group one. She didn’t ask for a speed awareness course because she wanted to improve her awareness, she asked for a private one instead of a group one because she wanted to be sneaky.
Within the last year, two of Braverman’s ministers at the Home Office were banned from driving for six months. The immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, was caught driving almost 30mph over the limit and the security minister, Tom Tugendhat, was caught driving while using a mobile phone.
What I mean. It’s normalized. It’s so normalized that it’s often all but impossible not to speed, because people will endanger you by tailgating at high speed unless you speed even more.
Simon Munk, the head of campaigns at the London Cycling Campaign, said: “The police and the coroners and everyone knows that speeding is one of the most kind of dangerous forms of driving. And yet we have a senior politician essentially asking to sidestep the law. It is difficult to square that with reducing fatal road collisions.”
And we have most people who drive not only speeding but doing their best to force everyone else to speed too.
If I may, while we’re on the subject of unsafe driving…
This is not just a pet peeve – it’s one of the reasons traffic dangerously accordions on the interstate as drivers have to brake to accommodate people whose time is so much more valuable than the rest of ours.
https://farcornercafe.blogspot.com/2023/05/plinys-inferno-ninth-circle-of-hell.html
Oh yes – me first merging. Grrrrrrr.
Well…there’s an unfortunate dynamic when traffic backs up at a merge.
Say the right lane is ending. Drivers see the sign; they start merging left. Now the left lane slows down and the right lane opens up. So drivers who stay in the right lane get a fast ride to the final merge point downstream. Meanwhile, drivers in the left lane go slower and slower as drivers in the right lane keep passing them and taking merge slots. I’ve been a left lane driver in these situations and it’s maddening.
When I see a lane drop coming, I get in the lane that is moving faster and I drive that lane all the way to the actual merge point: the point where the dividing line between the two lanes ends.
Some think the right-lane drivers are doing something dangerous or anti-social (line-cutting, so to speak), but it is the drivers who merge left before the merge point who are causing the problem. If everyone held their own lane all the way to the merge point, then traffic in the two lanes would remain balanced and there would be an orderly zipper merge at the merge point.
I imagine there are two reasons that people merge early. Some probably think that it is pro-social (courteous, cooperative), but this is misguided for the reason given above. More practically, the further down the right lane you go, the harder it becomes to merge left, because the left lane gets slower and denser. Drivers would rather merge sooner when it is easier than later when it is harder. (Again, a problem that would go away if everyone merged at the actual merge point.)
So there is a big speed difference between the two lanes, which is dangerous. Then there’s a kind of game of chicken going on in the right lane as each driver decides for themselves how far down the lane to go before merging left. And when they do decide to merge, they have to match the left-lane speed, which makes them a traffic hazard for the faster right lane.
The whole thing is a mess. Maybe a public education campaign to convince people to merge where they ought?
Another situation where nominally pro-social behavior leads to a sub-optimal outcome.
The London subway system has many very deep tubes, and many long escalators to carry passengers from the tubes to the ground.
Many of these escalators are wide enough to carry two people abreast on a step. Historically, the convention was stand right, walk left. That is, people who just want to stand on their step and ride the escalator stand on the right. People who want to climb up the escalator steps (because they are in a hurry, or need the exercise) pass on the left. Typical passing-lane convention, and people think they are being good citizens by respecting it.
But recently, someone realized that from a global standpoint, this is sub-optimal. If everyone stands on the escalator, two abreast, then the escalator transports two people per step. But when people walk on the left, there have to be empty steps between them, and the escalator transports fewer than two people per step. The passing-lane convention allows some people to get to the top faster, but has lower throughput.
So they changed the signage. Now it says “Stand left, stand right” and “Do not walk on escalator”.
Not fun for pedestrians:
right turn on red
traffic circles
left turners piling into the intersection, with one blocking the cross walk, while waiting for a chance to turn. And when the light turns red the one blocking the cross walk stays there, even when the driver behind leaves them room to back up out of the cross walk.
And if you’re a driver refusing to pile into the intersection in case you lose the light before you get a chance to turn……….so many times I’ve had drivers behind me honking when I didn’t do it, including cases where the probability that I would lose the light before getting a chance to turn was very high.
Another problem with “pro-social” behavior – witness Nebraska nice. Pulling up to a four way stop, and another car pulls up simultaneously on your right. He has the right of way. He sits. And sits. And sits. He doesn’t want to take the turn and be impolite. So you sit. Because you don’t know if he’s just sitting there for some stupid reason, and will suddenly realize it’s his turn, and plow into you. At least he could wave you on, right?
During the Moratorium marches late 60s early 70s, my pro-war father said we were stupid, wasting all that energy painting signs, marching, etc. He said we should coordinate so cars simultaneously approached uncontrolled intersections therefore every driver had to give way to the driver on their right and no one could move.
@Steven
What you describe only applies where the situation is already sub-optimal. If traffic is flowing at the designed road speed (reasonably) early merging is preferable. The solution is of course “build more trains”.
@iknklast,
The situation you described was more or less the basis for the John Prine song “The Accident” (although in that case, four cars arrived at the same time). Apparently based on a true story.
re. the London Underground changing their escalator policy… er, [citation needed]?
I’ve been travelling the tubes on and off for some years and haven’t noticed this. Note that escalator capacity is very rarely a meaningful bottleneck at any station.
Huh. That sounded odd to me too…but I just Googled “london underground signage do not walk on escalator” and there are lots of news hits from 2015-17. It’s true.
Then again, the Mail says in 2017 that it was scrapped, too many people didn’t like it.
I wouldn’t like it. I hate standing still on the damn things, it feels so robotic and stupid.
I sit corrected. :-)
(also I maintain that’s a bad analysis – if you have backlog of people waiting to get on the escalator then the limiting factor is the rate they can get on – not whether anyone already on the escalator shuffles forwards if they happen to have space)