A few years ago (when I commuted) I was driving in stop start traffic. I basically kept my car moving at tickover in 1st gear while the cars in from would pull about 8 car lengths ahead, stop, I’d creap up on them, then with luck traffic would start again and repeat. A chimp behind me couldn’t hack this and switched lane, passed me out then reentered my lane so they could get ahead of me and join the rest in stop and start routine
That’s what I do! Most people only look at the car directly in front of them, but it’s better to look a few cars ahead and observe how the traffic is flowing. There is no need to accelerate if you need to break again in a few seconds.
I hate it so much when people do that with their cars. It just makes the traffic jam much longer than it needs to be, possibly even extending it over the previous exit. It’s not rational, it’s just plain stupid and annoying.
Depends. Bigger gaps mean the traffic jam will get better faster since it reduces the stop and go. Ofc the gaps need to be reasonable but the people driving bumper to bumper make it even worse
I’d just cut in front of her since she was so nice to leave a gap. The lesson will be learned one way or another.
I see this in dense traffic every time I leave a bit of space and then all have to break instead of driving forward slowly. I hate these kind of people who make it worse for everyone else, by sneaking in.
Its only the same if you strictly consider ‘the time I stand in this line’.
Its different because everyone behind her loses a feeling of progress from moving up, and it increases the queue length (at least visually) which can impact other people’s decision on which queue to join which, of course can impact the other queues.
To think the way the image suggests is to be inconsiderate to others around you.
losing a feeling of progress
Right, that’s why it says perfectly rationally. If someone is really being perfectly rational they should only care about how long they wait inine, not a feeling of how long they wait. I don’t think being “perfectly rational” is something folks should strive to do.
I don’t think the person’s behaviour is rational at all. The queues in an airport are set up like they are for a good reason, to maximize the amount of people queuing in a given area. That is the rational behind the setup.
The person in the picture is ruining the system based in the time being spent queueing. But she is not considering the space taken up by the queue as a whole. Not very rational.
