8 ms·

> vehicle changes lanes in front of you; I will never understand why this is so rage-inducing for people. Changing lanes is a necessary part of navigating, ev

• loeg 9mo ago
  It's frustrating when it eats into your safe following distance. The driver merging in ahead of you is being dangerous and not leaving a safe following distance for themselves (or you).
  • Sohcahtoa82 9mo ago
    When traffic is heavy, everyone is likely following at [what they perceive to be] a minimum following distance. It's simply not possible to merge during heavy traffic without eating into someone's safe following distance.
  • MPSimmons 9mo ago
    The buffer exists to be used. Allowing people to merge into it makes the lane that they came from safer. Build a new buffer.
  • idiotsecant 9mo ago
    It takes almost no effort to restore your safe distance again.
  • ndsipa_pomu 9mo ago
    What's the problem with reducing speed and reclaiming a safe following distance?
• maerF0x0 9mo ago
  It's frustrating because someone is taking your safety buffer as their opportunity to travel faster. And it results in you having to travel slower and slower to maintain the gap that is constantly consumed, tragedy of the commons style, by opportunists.
  • a_e_k 9mo ago
    Not to mention if that if somebody needs to come over, the proper thing to do is signal first. Then I'm happy to politely ease off a bit and open more space for them to come over safely. It's the people who aggressively slide right over just a few feet in front of me (cutting off nearly all of my safety buffer) without so much as a signal that really drive me nuts.
    • maerF0x0 9mo ago
      It's the people who hit the gas when they see your signal, that really irk me. In Austin I stopped signaling because it was a punished behavior.
      • genocidicbunny 9mo ago
        My experience driving in MA and NY was similar, but so often it was because a rusted out shitbox was trying to merge in that would slow down traffic significantly, and not only put me at risk of rear ending them, but being rear ended myself. When flows merge, there's turbulence. There's less turbulence if the flows are more closely matched, including speed.
      • StillBored 9mo ago
        In Austin too, and probably just caused a driver to think the same thing. They were in the left lane on a frontage road which was suddenly turning left even though there was an entire lane opposite the intersection blocked off by those plastic things that seem popular to randomly place in the road these days. I saw them hesitate and figured they wanted to merge right, so i decelerated a bit to add another car length or or so, at maybe 10-15mph. They had plenty of space, flipped on their blinker, and instead of just merging started slowing down, to which I decided I wasn't going to brake more to allow them to block myself and everyone else from rolling through the intersection. They basically stopped in their lane, and beeped as I rolled by, to which someone behind them beeped at them for blocking the lane. In Austin if you want to merge, decide if you can, blink and then merge. Don't expect people to stomp on their brakes and stop to let you in, especially if your already traveling slower than the lane you are trying to get into and decide to further slow yourself. And if you can't merge, deal with it, exit, or miss your exit and go around. Next time you will be more prepared or you will learn how to properly merge.
• chausen 9mo ago
  It brings me peace to see other people thinking this way. You should be an active participant on the highway, making decisions to maximize flow. Leaving space so people can merge, controlling speed to smooth slowdowns, anticipating traffic patterns, etc. All of the people tailgating are contributing to the congestion. https://youtu.be/iHzzSao6ypE https://youtu.be/iHzzSao6ypE
  • deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  • leviathant 9mo ago
    The trick I keep in mind in situations like this is to look at brake lights ahead of me. If cars are braking and I'm accelerating, I'm probably going to end up driving very inefficiently. By letting off the accelerator, I don't close the gap as quickly, and eventually, the turbulence in the traffic flow steadies out. Instead of stopping and starting, I roll at an averaged out speed, which doesn't feel as frustrating (it's kind of relaxing) and is better for fuel economy. There are, of course, the weavers who jump from gap to gap, tailgating and pushing. Sometimes it works, sometimes they just get jammed up. I don't drive as often as I used to, but on I-76 coming into or out of Philadelphia, traffic gets snarled and becomes stop-and-go. Every now and then, someone next to me appears to have the same understanding of fluid dynamics as I do, and we build up enough of a buffer that we are able to eliminate the stop-and-go, even if it means rolling at 5mph with a big gap between us and the cars in front of us. There's no good way to communicate what we're doing, even to each other. But I like to think that when this happens, it has a positive effect that ripples out for miles.
    • westmeal 9mo ago
      76 is the worst
    • Sohcahtoa82 9mo ago
      > I roll at an averaged out speed, which doesn't feel as frustrating (it's kind of relaxing) and is better for fuel economy Yup. The brake pedal is an evil device that converts cash into brake dust and waste heat. Before I got an EV, I always drove in such a way to use the pedal as little as possible. As a result, in my previous car that was stickered at 24 mpg city/30 mpg highway, I averaged 32 mpg. I don't even drive slow, I just drive smoothly. If your average speed is going to be 5 mph, then you'll get much better economy driving a constant 5 mph than your speed being a sine wave between 0 and 10 mph.
• Dylan16807 9mo ago
  The problem isn't merging, it's people that are changing lanes to get ahead. It's especially not people trying to get off the highway because then they leave and you can catch back up to where you originally were.
• aeontech 9mo ago
  I'll tell you what I specifically and intentionally do when I need to change lanes. I brake slightly, signal, and wait for the person on my right or my left to pull ahead of me, then change lanes immediately _behind_ them. Then sit there for a moment until my following distance evens out a bit. This ensures that a) I do not cut anyone off accidentally, and minimize the amount of stress in my immediate part of the universe b) I will (most likely) have plenty of room behind me after I change lanes, reducing chances of anyone else running up on me c) If there's noticeable traffic, the time I spend signaling and waiting for the person to move slightly ahead of me gives plenty of warning to the people _behind_ them that I'm about to enter the lane. Ultimately, yes, of course in principle you're right, when I change lanes, I enter the lane in front of someone.... but I _can_ control whether I enter as far as possible ahead of them.
  • genocidicbunny 9mo ago
    You shouldn't be braking when changing lanes is what I was taught, you should be matching the speed of the lane you're merging to. There are many drivers who think that braking is always the right solution, when sometimes it's a little more gas. And in inclement conditions, it can make the difference between losing control of your vehicle or not. When you brake, you decrease your steering ability in most cars. Fine when its calm and sunny in CA, not so much when it's icing over near Ashland OR on the pass.
    • aeontech 9mo ago
      Well, sure - braking is mostly relevant when merging to the slower lane, when merging to faster lane I generally do not need to - since that lane is already moving faster, just need to speed up slightly and time it for the right moment. My point is, it feels safer and easier to aim to enter a new lane with the aim of "following" someone, rather than trying to rush in "ahead" of someone. But maybe it's just me.
• observationist 9mo ago
  It's considerate communication. Lurching into the next lane .08 seconds after the blinker first flashes says things like "Your life isn't worth the basic consideration and respect of communicating my intentions" and scales up to "I'll communicate, but you're not worth any sort of common courtesy" - that can be upsetting to people. It doesn't even have to be real. There's huge room for miscommunication. Unpredictable movements and perceived aggression, or unwillingness to be considerate to other drivers on the road, there's a whole wealth of information being processed, regardless of how little is actually real. Now add the total lack of accountability for the driver's emotional state (don't you love yelling at other drivers, completely free of judgement?), and you can see how things spiral into road rage so relatively easily, even if everyone involved is normally a pretty chill, rational person. If you're tailgating or brake-checking, or being inattentive and sloppy, you're basically threatening people's lives with a few tons of high speed metal, even if you don't intend that at all. Ideally, the rules of the road are meant to reinforce a mutual understanding of the game being played. Behavior occurring when expected, proper signaling, observing limits, and making the effort to communicate where possible is a signal that you and the other driver are both operating by the same set of rules, giving you both confidence that neither of you are going to be a danger. I've seen little "cute" exceptions where locals develop a subculture of dangerous assumptions and then get aggravated when someone from out of town doesn't immediately get it. There are other areas where aggression and what amounts to flagrant disrespect are the norm, so you've always gotta be adaptive, but ideally you get people conspicuously following the same set of rules as a sort of game theoretic optimal strategy for driving.
• crest 9mo ago
  > I will never understand why this is so rage-inducing for people. The train of tought goes something like this. You want to get to your destination quickly as just like everyone else and are doing everything correctly, but the assholes exploit that safety distance as a gap available for them to switch into and repeatedly forcing you to break to maintain a safe distance. Oh and the even less rational people think everyone overtaking them has stolen their rat race position. Leaving a keeping a safe distance feels unsafe since other drivers will squeeze into it. Subjectively it feels safer to close the distance, but the numbers don't lie. Tailgating kills.
• ehnto 9mo ago
  Might depend on your location, but usually you are legally required to allow a merge. Which makes sense, the system stops working when two lanes that are required to merge, don't merge because people are being petty and entitled.
• overfeed 9mo ago
  > I will never understand why this is so rage-inducing for people Putting my armchair psychoanalyst hat on: I think American society embeds a need to be the "winner", and are you winning if end up behind another driver who's contending for "your" spot? If you've driven elsewhere for a while, you start noticing subtle driver differences, such as drivers who want to merge into your (slower) lane never braking to merge behind you and always accelerating to do so, even when you're at the tail end of a vehicle chain in your lane.
  • frogulis 9mo ago
    Driving in Melbourne -- I won't generalise to the wider Australia -- is often much the same. Comparing to the experience of being a passenger on a bike in Saigon, the level of cooperation there is way higher, possibly due to a sort of necessity. I had this feeling while observing traffic there, that, while the latency and throughput of the roads during high traffic times are still kinda awful, at least for bikes there's a slow continuous progress that simply wouldn't exist without cooperation. Funnily enough, my experience driving in Los Angeles was distinctly not terrible. Traffic was usually good enough to drive in, though there was very little regard for the speed limit on the freeways! I suspect I may have just been lucky to miss the worst of the traffic.
    • justkys 9mo ago
      [dead]
• stronglikedan 9mo ago
  You know very well that normal lane changing isn't what the person you're replying to is referring to.