Looking in the Rear View Mirror

It always astounds me how many people are willing to break the law on the road. I drive to work or to university every day, and there is almost always one person willing to brave police, cameras and death to get to their destination faster. It's a pet peeve of mine that people risk their (and my) life in such a way. Some might get annoyed when they sit behind me as I do the speed limit, but for some reason they never flash their brights for me to go faster.

With an average trip (for me) taking half an hour with no traffic or an hour and a half with, it's no wonder people may be tempted. By breaking the law, speeding, using bus lanes or generally being jerks on the road, they get to their destination faster. They will avoid the soul-killing waits in carpark-like traffic. And they will be more productive once they get to their job. Or will they?

Take a 60km/h road such as the one near my house. I spend 10 minutes on that road on a good day. Increase speed to 80km/h like some drivers do along the road. That ten minutes becomes seven and a half, but the stopping distance of the car doing it nearly doubles. Two and a half minutes. What would this hypothetical driver do with their two and a half minutes when they got to work? Facebook? Talk for another minute before clocking on?

The time difference actually decreases as you increase in speed limits. On a 100km/h road, going 10 km/h over the limit will save you a fraction of the trip. In a school zone of 40km/h going the normal 60km/h will save you all of fifteen seconds. Hardly seems worth it.

Take a carpark of traffic such as the motorway near my house. This is a place where I cringe at the thought of paint scraping from my car as drivers weave through traffic. There was an advertisement on television about five years back. A motorcyclist tells the viewers to double check for him as he ducks through a gap between two cars. Here's a thought: don't drive dangerously. That might reduce accidents. As for cars, they are probably worse. Driving the motorway is a game. You have two or three lanes and at different points on the road one will move faster than the other. At entrances, the left lane moves slower. At exits, the left lane moves faster. It's all about knowing the lanes. But it's not really this that slows traffic. The thing that slows traffic is a series of cars trying to change out of the 'slow' lane into the fast. Take a look though, I implore drivers, at the cars in the lanes. Even if you play the game perfectly, and end up in the right lanes all along, you will be maybe fifty cars ahead of where you started.

Once traffic starts moving again (and it always does at a certain point for some unknowable reason) you will be fifty cars (or about nine seconds once you hit 100km/h) ahead of everyone else. I mean, nine seconds is a lot of time. With nine seconds you could let the shampoo soak in a little more, you could go searching down the back of the dresser for your favorite pair of socks. You could walk slightly slower to the office instead of at a normal gait.

Or you could wake up and leave home two minutes and thirty nine seconds earlier.

There's a thought. Go to sleep earlier and you won't even have lost any sleep over it. And it's not only my health you're saving by slowing down and leaving earlier. A major cause of road rage is stress. When we speed, we stress. When we spend the morning traffic looking for an opening we stress far more than the cars we pass. By the way, those cars get to work on time. The people in them are less stressed about time. They are enjoying the moment for what it is: a chance to reflect or plan the day. Or, hell, I've seen people enjoying the moment with breakfast and a broadsheet.

Stress is bad for anyone, but so is an accident. Accidents don't happen to everyone, but stress certainly does.