2007.08.16 Driving Thoughts

Thoughts that have occurred to me while driving:

I wonder if traffic flow behaves at like a theoretical compressible fluid. It would explain the wave propagation effect of many traffic disturbances. Also, it might mean that if we can reduce the intrinsic viscosity of traffic, it would move more quickly. Meaning, that if we all let people change lanes or whatever without blocking them, everybody in traffic would overall move faster. Just consider that the next time you prevent somebody from changing lanes in front of you, so you can cling to 10 meters of relative progress. Want traffic to flow faster? Let people in with less resistance.

What sort of collective narcissism is it that causes virtually everybody in a parking lot to drive like there's no other cars in it? Look, there's room for two cars to go through a section in opposite directions. How about we all just concede that there is indeed a possibility that another car might actually show up in a parking lot, and so drive in a manner that allows that potential car to get by. The same thing applies to entrances, small bendy roads, and pretty much any place you can drive that doesn't have explicit little lines telling you exactly which half of the path you should stick to.

I can understand being impatient while driving, I really can. I can also understand not being so concerned about driving that you feel it doesn't require 100% of your attention. I just can't understand combining the two. It's just retarded foolish. If you're going to be 0.2 seconds off my back bumper while we're both exceeding the speed limit, don't you think it might be a situation where you wouldn't want to be talking into a cell phone? If I ever snap, these are the people who are going to die first.

Running a red light is a bad thing. I hope that lots more intersection cameras are installed so that drivers doing this are punished so that it happens less. Accelerating towards and through a red light for a duration which would have been ample time to stop for the light is just fucking retarded idiotic. People doing this should be caught, sterilized from breeding, and forced to work as ER staff assistants for the rest of their natural lives.

I sometimes think that quick-and-easy vehicle-to-vehicle communication systems would be very handy.
"Pardon me."
"May I merge, please?"
"Thanks!"
"I'm going to try to turn left, so you might not want to be stuck behind me."
"Help!"
"Need help?"
"Help's on the way - don't worry about me stuck on the side of the road."
Unfortunately, I think the reality is that it would mostly just be a lot more cursing.

Fingering somebody back doesn't make something not your fault.

Just because you can coax your piece of crap up to the same speed as a high-performance machine is traveling doesn't mean you necessarily should.