Originally Posted by
DX-MAN
Maybe it's just ME, but I'd think that would be a great big RED FLAG to drivers! "There's more of us than anyone else, and people are dying all over the place; CONNECTION...?"
Well we don't want to make big broad brush statements about motorists as some of us at one time or another ARE motorists... but indeed something about driving a car seems to deduct some IQ points along the way.
I think the classic case of this is the selfishness I see on a local on-ramp that is in a construction area within sight of my office. This ramp narrows from 3 lanes to one lane to enter the freeway. When drivers co-operate and "zipper merge" the traffic flows pretty well and the cars get onto the freeway at about 30-40 MPH and have room to run up the speed. When drivers get aggressive (and it only takes a few) and they block off other drivers so they can get to the on ramp scant seconds ahead of someone else, it fouls up the whole system... and suddenly the feeder ramps back up, and the whole thing bogs down so that cars end up crawling onto the freeway, thus congesting the whole right lane.
The problem is the "me motorists," the drivers that refuse to merge and expect to drive right on to the freeway without merging. You'd think they'd "get it" as this is a daily rush hour event that has gone on for months. But no, there is always a couple of selfish buttheads that start pushing and shoving, and then it goes bust.
The road department has a series of stop lights on a boom that they have moved about as the ramp is moved and shaped (as adjacent ramps for other entrances/exits get shaped), but the stop lights on the boom tend to be the last thing moved, so there are always several days of uncontrolled merging. It is somewhat entertaining to watch the merging motorists do their thing until the butthead comes along.
With the stoplights on the boom, the whole ramp works quite smoothly, and traffic just flows. But to get motorists to do this on their own... nope, fails every time... 'cause someone has to be selfish and tie it up for everyone else.
No one seems to make the connection that selfish driving screws things up... likely because perhaps they DO get away with it, and the motorists behind are the ones screwed. (the book "Traffic: Why we drive the way we do" actually covered this, discussed how and why the selfish driver does what they do, while screwing everyone else).
Bottom line, all it takes is a couple drivers ignoring "RED FLAGS" and things can go badly rather quickly.