Traffic
Last week was a week of firsts. First time I drove all the way from SF to LA (went home for the weekend before I started work). First day at work. First real, biology career-path job. First job which involves a sizeable commute. About 50 miles round trip. I can now say I have joined the California masses who find themselves stuck in some kind of commuter traffic day in, day out. While I haven’t been driving for long enough to have developed road rage, I must say that a week’s worth of commuting has exposed me to lots and lots of bad, bad drivers. There’s the absent-minded driver. The driver who always hugs one side of the lane, scaring drivers in the adjacent lane. The impatient driver to likes to cut people off. The tailgater. The speed-demon. The weaver.For me, it’s the weaver that really gets to me. He can’t stay in one lane and feels the need to constantly change lanes in order to go a tiny bit faster than the rest of traffic. The reason I dislike the weaver is because he is also likely to be the one to cut you off, to tailgate, and to speed... The weaver tends to have the greatest potential for mixing all of those qualities that makes someone an inconsiderate and annoying driver, making the morning/evening commute something of a nightmare for the rest of us.
I used to always wonder, does weaving in and out of traffic--trying to squeeze your car into the fastest moving lane—really make that much of a difference in shaving enough time off of the commute to justify the effort (not to mention danger)? And this leads me to thinking… does any one lane move faster overall than the other lanes? Is there truly a “fast” lane when traffic is nearly bumper to bumper?
To answer the first question, all I had to do was merely observe other cars as I commuted to work last week. The weavers were easy to spot due to their behavior, and easy to remember because of their flashy cars (there seems to be a positive correlation between aggressive drivers and the flashiness of their vehicles). As I was driving, I noticed certain cars whose drivers displayed the characteristic lane-changing behavior of weavers. They would often get ahead of me by changing into lanes which had relatively faster movement. Sometimes, they would even get so far ahead that I couldn’t see them anymore. However, more often than not, the course of traffic changes and eventually, I will find myself side-by-side with the flashy weavers’ cars again. Maybe it’ll take my entire commute to find them again, but it is nearly inevitable: in slow-moving traffic, weaving makes very little difference in commute time, if at all.
To answer the next question, I have decided to perform a little commute experiment. This morning, I drove almost the whole way in the fast lane. I plan on driving in the same innermost fast lane the whole way back after work (don’t worry dad, the term “fast lane” is kind of a misnomer in this case, due to traffic). Tomorrow I will drive in the second lane, Wednesday in the 3rd lane, and Thursday in the outermost slow lane. By Friday, I should have a good idea of how long the average commute is and if any one lane is much slower or faster than that average.*
Yes, it seems like a lot of work to bother with, but I need to do something to keep me from getting bored while driving to and from work. This experiment will do nicely for this week’s commute.
* I reserve the right to remove myself from the outermost slow lane if it proves to indeed be much slower than the other lanes. C’mon, it’s not like I’m gonna purposely be late for work in the name of traffic science. Plus, the commute is long enough as it is.
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