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A shame "rubberneckers" were mentioned (even if in passing); it always bothers me when "rubberneckers" are blamed for a slowdown, despite that it may simply be

A shame "rubberneckers" were mentioned (even if in passing); it always bothers me when "rubberneckers" are blamed for a slowdown, despite that it may simply be the long-term wave slow-down after the incident (as also discussed in the article). The reason it bothers me, especially when it's mentioned in a traffic report, is it gives everyone a little easy road rage "blame the bad driver" excuse when everyone just needs to chill out and realize this will only cause a few minutes delay at worst. It's also futile to try to "train" everyone to overcome these little wave effects. All you're going to do is give some people an excuse to rage at others about their "inefficient" driving. Just keep your distance, follow the rules of the road, and put on some good music/audiobook/podcast/etc. You will get there eventually, and one day better self-driving cars or mass transit will make this frustration moot. (Note that even if self-driving cars aren't specifically programmed to solve the wave effect, it won't matter because you'll be too busy watching TV or reading to give a damn. I'm all for efficiency, but having commuted by car for years, it's not about these little things anyways, it's the sheer time spent that is the worst thing (and damaging on a personal level), and traffic accidents truly do block traffic anyways.)

jakejake 13y ago
I think it's easy to call everybody rubber-neckers, but in reality when you pass a big mess of police lights or anybody stopped on the side of the road, I consider it a bit of a courtesy and safety to slow it down a little and, if possible, merge into a lane so you don't do a "fly by" at full speed with somebody standing at the side of the road.
vacri 13y ago
It's entirely too human to have spent 20 minutes in a jam to finally get to the bottleneck, then spend all of 5 seconds seeing what all the fuss was. It'd be nice if folks didn't do this, but they're not going to stop en masse.

jakejake 13y ago

I think it's easy to call everybody rubber-neckers, but in reality when you pass a big mess of police lights or anybody stopped on the side of the road, I consider it a bit of a courtesy and safety to slow it down a little and, if possible, merge into a lane so you don't do a "fly by" at full speed with somebody standing at the side of the road.

vacri 13y ago

It's entirely too human to have spent 20 minutes in a jam to finally get to the bottleneck, then spend all of 5 seconds seeing what all the fuss was. It'd be nice if folks didn't do this, but they're not going to stop en masse.