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05-31-03, 08:57 AM
In, "The Efficient Society" by Joesph Heath, there was great example of how we must sometimes use the force of law in order to allow people to obtain the goals that they themselves want to obtain.
It plays into my belief of stricter traffic law enforcement. I scanned part of the text, but what is left is a little long but , I think, is well worth reading.
:)
A very general principle: when individuals act in the most efficient manner possible, it does not necessarily produce a collective outcome that is efficient. A set of actions that makes each individual in a group better off can also make the group as a whole much worse off. This is often called a perverse outcome.
In the end, the way people drive is just as much to blame for traffic jams as the number of people who are driving. Many of the laws governing traffic are intended to stop drivers from doing this to themselves. While building more roads and increasing public transit would both help ease traffic congestion, the fastest way to improve traffic flow, would be simply to get more police out there to enforce the rules.
Paradoxically, we sometimes have to stop people from doing what comes naturally to them in order to promote their own interests. More bluntly, we must sometimes use the force of law in order to allow people to obtain the goals that they themselves want to obtain.
We are all familiar with the standard litany of complaints about truckers. In Holland, the government decided to get serious about it.
It is common knowledge that trucks pose the greatest danger to other vehicles while overtaking and passing. This is why, in many parts of North America, trucks are prohibited from entering the third lane on a highway with more than two lanes. The Dutch decided to take it up a notch. They enacted a law that prevented trucks from entering the second lane as well, even on two-lane highways. This made it illegal for trucks to pass on more than 70 percent of highways in the country.
The truckers, predictably, went ballistic. They claimed that the law would paralyze the economy. No more fresh vegetables! No more justin.time manufacturing! All transactions and trade would take longer and cost more. International competitiveness would be crippled! The government ignored them.
A couple of weeks after the law came into effect, truckers began to notice something strange. They discovered that it was starting to take them less time, not more, to reach their destinations. A study was commissioned. Sure enough, the average capacity of affected roads had increased by 36 per cent. Furthermore, the average speed had increased inbotltlanes. Even the truckers were forced to admit that the new regulation was an improvement. By preventing the truckers from passing slower vehicles, the law had the unintended consequence of actually speeding up all the traffic, including the truckers themselves.
How is this possible?
Passing is not a problem when one car is moving very slowly, holding everyone else back. The problems arise when people try to beat the average speed of traffic on the road. If traffic on a highway is moving just over the usual speed limit, it will be zipping along at about thirty metres per second. Drivers are also instructed to maintain a three-second following distance (although in practice they usually stay closer to two). In any case, with these following distances, at these speeds, there is plenty of room between vehicles to fit a third one in--even a large truck. This makes passing quite easy (whereas on a city street, it is often the case that someone must "let you in").
But while there is usually enough physical space to move in between vehicles withour hitting either one, there is often not enough "time" space between them to do so without causing disruption. When you zip in between two cars, you often force the motorist behind you to hit the brakes in order to maintain proper following distance. This may cause a chain reaction back through all the other motorists behind. Each must slow down in order to adjust his following distance. So while the pass may shave a few seconds off your commuting time, it adds a few seconds to the commute time of maybe a dozen cars behind you.
Suppose that after making the pass, you are able to travel 10 km per hour faster. However, the pass has the effect of slowing down twelve cars behind you. In order for the pass to generate a net increase in the average travel time on the road, you would have to maintain the increased speed for quite a while. Chances are, however, that you will not have an unobstructed road in front of you. Within a few minutes, you will encounter another vehicle moving slower than you, forcing you to decelerate or, worse, execute another pass. If you choose to pass, it may again slow down the traffic behind you. As a result, your passes will speed up your trip, but they will slow down all the vehicles behind you, and thus reduce the average speed of vehicles on the road.
Of course, if you were the only one passing, you would not suffer any negative consequences. But just as your passing slows down everyone behind you, the people passing in front of you slow you down. In effect, commuters all slow each other down, even though not one of them slows him or herself down. Each motorist who speeds through, trying to maintain a velocity higher than the average for the road, generates a wake of disruption and delay, like the ripples emanating from the back of a boat.
The Dutch truckers, of course, had no idea that they were doing this to one another. It seems logical to suppose that if everyone drives as fast as possible, the traffic as a whole will move as fast as possible. But this tums out to be false. It is in fact a paradigm case of individual efficiency genetating collective inefficiency.
What makes these inefficient outcomes especially perverse is that even if everyone recognizes the problem and sees how his or her own behaviour is contributing to it, this may have absolutely no effect. Having learned from the Dutch example, we now know that passing slows down traffic. Does this mean that we will all stop passing? Absolutely not-because we have no individual incentive to stop. After all, passing still helps you to get where you're going faster; it only slows down the people behind you. As economists say, the costs of your behaviour are extemalized. So why not do it?
It should be noted that some of the passing that goes on is based on misperception. Studies have shown that many drivers have the impression that the "other lane" is moving faster, even when it isn't. The effect is a sort of optical illusion generated by the experience of sitting in traffic flow. As a result, drivers often make gratuitous lane changes, which has the effect of exacerbating the existing traffic flow problems. But it is important to see how different this case is from the one of passing a slower vehicle. Once the illusion that the other lane is faster has been exposed, it removes the incentive to switch. But when passing a slower vehicle, there is no comparable illusion. Passing does actually move you through faster. It only slows down others. As a result, simply becoming aware of the social consequences of the action does not necessarily make anyone less likely to do it.
It plays into my belief of stricter traffic law enforcement. I scanned part of the text, but what is left is a little long but , I think, is well worth reading.
:)
A very general principle: when individuals act in the most efficient manner possible, it does not necessarily produce a collective outcome that is efficient. A set of actions that makes each individual in a group better off can also make the group as a whole much worse off. This is often called a perverse outcome.
In the end, the way people drive is just as much to blame for traffic jams as the number of people who are driving. Many of the laws governing traffic are intended to stop drivers from doing this to themselves. While building more roads and increasing public transit would both help ease traffic congestion, the fastest way to improve traffic flow, would be simply to get more police out there to enforce the rules.
Paradoxically, we sometimes have to stop people from doing what comes naturally to them in order to promote their own interests. More bluntly, we must sometimes use the force of law in order to allow people to obtain the goals that they themselves want to obtain.
We are all familiar with the standard litany of complaints about truckers. In Holland, the government decided to get serious about it.
It is common knowledge that trucks pose the greatest danger to other vehicles while overtaking and passing. This is why, in many parts of North America, trucks are prohibited from entering the third lane on a highway with more than two lanes. The Dutch decided to take it up a notch. They enacted a law that prevented trucks from entering the second lane as well, even on two-lane highways. This made it illegal for trucks to pass on more than 70 percent of highways in the country.
The truckers, predictably, went ballistic. They claimed that the law would paralyze the economy. No more fresh vegetables! No more justin.time manufacturing! All transactions and trade would take longer and cost more. International competitiveness would be crippled! The government ignored them.
A couple of weeks after the law came into effect, truckers began to notice something strange. They discovered that it was starting to take them less time, not more, to reach their destinations. A study was commissioned. Sure enough, the average capacity of affected roads had increased by 36 per cent. Furthermore, the average speed had increased inbotltlanes. Even the truckers were forced to admit that the new regulation was an improvement. By preventing the truckers from passing slower vehicles, the law had the unintended consequence of actually speeding up all the traffic, including the truckers themselves.
How is this possible?
Passing is not a problem when one car is moving very slowly, holding everyone else back. The problems arise when people try to beat the average speed of traffic on the road. If traffic on a highway is moving just over the usual speed limit, it will be zipping along at about thirty metres per second. Drivers are also instructed to maintain a three-second following distance (although in practice they usually stay closer to two). In any case, with these following distances, at these speeds, there is plenty of room between vehicles to fit a third one in--even a large truck. This makes passing quite easy (whereas on a city street, it is often the case that someone must "let you in").
But while there is usually enough physical space to move in between vehicles withour hitting either one, there is often not enough "time" space between them to do so without causing disruption. When you zip in between two cars, you often force the motorist behind you to hit the brakes in order to maintain proper following distance. This may cause a chain reaction back through all the other motorists behind. Each must slow down in order to adjust his following distance. So while the pass may shave a few seconds off your commuting time, it adds a few seconds to the commute time of maybe a dozen cars behind you.
Suppose that after making the pass, you are able to travel 10 km per hour faster. However, the pass has the effect of slowing down twelve cars behind you. In order for the pass to generate a net increase in the average travel time on the road, you would have to maintain the increased speed for quite a while. Chances are, however, that you will not have an unobstructed road in front of you. Within a few minutes, you will encounter another vehicle moving slower than you, forcing you to decelerate or, worse, execute another pass. If you choose to pass, it may again slow down the traffic behind you. As a result, your passes will speed up your trip, but they will slow down all the vehicles behind you, and thus reduce the average speed of vehicles on the road.
Of course, if you were the only one passing, you would not suffer any negative consequences. But just as your passing slows down everyone behind you, the people passing in front of you slow you down. In effect, commuters all slow each other down, even though not one of them slows him or herself down. Each motorist who speeds through, trying to maintain a velocity higher than the average for the road, generates a wake of disruption and delay, like the ripples emanating from the back of a boat.
The Dutch truckers, of course, had no idea that they were doing this to one another. It seems logical to suppose that if everyone drives as fast as possible, the traffic as a whole will move as fast as possible. But this tums out to be false. It is in fact a paradigm case of individual efficiency genetating collective inefficiency.
What makes these inefficient outcomes especially perverse is that even if everyone recognizes the problem and sees how his or her own behaviour is contributing to it, this may have absolutely no effect. Having learned from the Dutch example, we now know that passing slows down traffic. Does this mean that we will all stop passing? Absolutely not-because we have no individual incentive to stop. After all, passing still helps you to get where you're going faster; it only slows down the people behind you. As economists say, the costs of your behaviour are extemalized. So why not do it?
It should be noted that some of the passing that goes on is based on misperception. Studies have shown that many drivers have the impression that the "other lane" is moving faster, even when it isn't. The effect is a sort of optical illusion generated by the experience of sitting in traffic flow. As a result, drivers often make gratuitous lane changes, which has the effect of exacerbating the existing traffic flow problems. But it is important to see how different this case is from the one of passing a slower vehicle. Once the illusion that the other lane is faster has been exposed, it removes the incentive to switch. But when passing a slower vehicle, there is no comparable illusion. Passing does actually move you through faster. It only slows down others. As a result, simply becoming aware of the social consequences of the action does not necessarily make anyone less likely to do it.