Eric Miller, with the University of Toronto Transportation Research Institute, on how to merge most efficiently when you’re running out of lane
“By butting in early instead of driving until your lane runs out, you are slowing down everybody behind you. The ideal situation would be that every car makes space for one car as the lane runs out. Everybody would keep rolling slowly, but you wouldn’t have this ‘stop-start,’ which causes delays. And on average, we’d all be better off. But some people are more generous with this than other people. By and large, it’s not that people are bad people, but everybody drives and does things to kind of maximize their own benefits, to reduce their own travel time.”
Eric Miller on why traffic jams can happen seemingly without accidents or roadwork
“There’s the classic slow driver in the left-hand lane, who drives everybody crazy, that’s clearly slowing down traffic in that lane in particular. But it’s also creating excess weaving manoeuvres, as people are trying to get around the slow driver. And those weaving manoeuvres can actually slow down everything. Somebody cuts in front of you, you have to brake a little bit, the guy behind you brakes a little bit, and maybe the person behind him…all that extra turmoil from people dodging in and out slows down traffic as a whole. Traffic moves best when it’s nice and smooth and moving at a constant speed.”
Psychologist Sam Klarreich, on the stress of traffic
“People have these rules in their heads. They’re in a hurry, they have to get to the cottage by a certain time. You can allow yourself to get overly upset. But why upset yourself when there’s nothing you can do about it? It achieves absolutely nothing. So you have to either talk yourself through it—‘If I get upset, it’s making things worse, not better’—or distract yourself. Put on some great music; talk to your seat partner; play a game. But if you absolutely can’t handle the stress of traffic, you have to figure out ways to avoid it. Drive to the cottage during off hours. Use a phone app. But there’s a benefit to desensitizing ourselves to stressful situations. It’s how we develop tools to handle stress.”
This information appeared as part of “Have Cottage, Will Travel,” in our Winter ’20 issue.
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