randya

https://bostonbiker.org/2011/02/01/le...wing-you-down/

mnemia

A lot of drivers have really poor perception of how fast they're actually traveling in their car. Many confuse peak speeds with average speeds, for example. Also, I believe that driving everywhere gives you an exaggerated perception of distance. Because people are used to their cars going very fast at times, they subconsciously overestimate the distance they are covering when they are in a congested area and traveling more slowly. Over time, this makes things like walking or biking a few blocks seem more daunting than it really is. There are a lot of interesting psychological effects going on with driving, and I think that that contributes to the whole "must get ahead of the bicyclist at all costs" phenomenon we've all observed where some idiot driver attempts to pass right before a red light. Again, driving a car distorts your perception of speed and distance because of the wide range of speeds that cars are capable of.

Another thing that slows down drivers and makes them waste fuel is their own poor driving skills. A lot of them insist on riding right up behind the vehicle in front of them, leaving no following gap at all (you can see a lot of that in the picture above). This forces them to constantly accelerate and decelerate, contributes to accidents, contributes to congestion, and so on. Again, I think people do this because they are obsessed with constantly reaching the peak speed their vehicle is capable of in any given situation, rather than with achieving a certain average travel speed. But when you throw slower moving vehicles (e.g., bikes) or congestion into the mix, that behavior can actually slow drivers down. When you get right up behind the vehicle in front of you, it's hard to go around them if they're moving slower than the traffic behind you or in the next lane. But if you follow at a more steady pace, leave a gap, and go around well in advance, you give yourself acceleration space so that you can get around without as much of a delay. A lot of motorists don't seem to grasp these basic driving skills, and seem to have no more "knowledge" of how to drive than "stomp the gas when there's nothing in front of me, and stomp the brake when there is". Again, I think there would be a lot less friction over bicycles sharing the road if the majority of drivers actually knew how to operate their vehicles in a competent manner. They should be required to.

TheHen

That was a nice little piece. I have occasionally counted the amount of time I spend waiting for cars and the amount of time JAMs spend waiting for me. It's no contest: I typically wait orders of magnitude longer for the cars to get out of my way than they wait for me. It is also fun to watch how aggressive the JAMs are about passing if the vehicle in front of them is a bike, even to the point of arriving at the intersection on the wrong side of the road (that has led to some pretty funny JAM-JAM interactions). Somehow when the obstacle is another car they are okay with waiting their turn.

genec

Pretty well stated, really covers an interesting area of driver psychology. Of course that driver mindset is clearly endorsed by road designs and town designs that seem to embrace only the motor vehicle as a "valid" form of transportation.

CB HI

True, but sadly it will not happen.

Pobble.808

So true. I have found that when driving on the highway and even on multi-lane city roads it's pretty much pointless to try keeping a gap of a couple of car lengths behind the vehicle in front of you, because somebody will almost invariably rush in to fill the space. Nature really does abhor a vacuum, apparently...

unterhausen

last Thursday someone passes me on a downhill -- 15mph road with a long red light ahead of us. This intersection is one where motorists are always making me miss the short light cycle for our road and the opposing light is very long. So I generally ride way out to keep people from passing, but this guy guns it and goes around only to slam on the brakes when he gets to the line of traffic waiting for the light. Just as the light finally turns green, I see him put his head down fooling with his radio or something. I yelled.

bhop

Too bad typical drivers won't be reading a bike blog.

CritEastwood

That's why harshing on them in news blahgs is so fun.

CB HI

Time to troll the auto blogs?

ItsJustMe

One driver turning left on a 2 lane road will do more to slow down motorists than I will during my whole commute, but nobody thinks about that.

Rusty5329

Absolutely love the rant!

twobadfish

Wait, is the article suggesting the drivers blame cyclists for traffic jams?

Having to wait for cyclist to clear lane != traffic jam

AlmostTrick

I found that driving within the speed limit almost always ensures a huge gap in front of me. When someone does change into the lane I'm in there is plenty of space for them to safely do so, and the gap quickly grows as they exceed the posted limit. I don't even have to slow down, just continue at a constant rate and watch the brake lights flash on the tailgaters well ahead of me.

It's actually quite relaxing (and much safer) once you stop worrying that someone else might "get ahead" of you.

billdsd

Yep. I stopped speeding in my car around 15 years or so ago. The thing that convinced me was that I tried timing my regular trips both speeding and not speeding and found that the time difference tended to be somewhere between small and non-existent. After a while, the effect you pointed out became very very clear to me. I do find it funny when I'm driving up I-5 to Orange County and I end up passing the same car(s) several times as they get stuck in traffic due to their poor ability to read traffic as they continuously keep speeding up and slowing down while I maintain the speed limit on cruise control. I do have to change lanes some, but I tend to do it early so that I never have a difficult time doing so and I usually end up changing lanes a lot less than they do. I wonder what they think as they keep seeing me pass them over and over again?

CritEastwood

They don't think because they are obviously incapable of rational thought if behaving in that manner to begin with. I've driven down to Sad Diego a few times in the past six years and always experience what you described above, except I don't bother with cruise control.

noisebeam

nonsense. just don't speed. driving is a lot more enjoyable if one is relaxed while doing it.

larry_llama

I almost never speed, partially out of necessaity (the cabureted 79 volvo is not really nimble int he acceleration department). It is so relaxing. ANd the antics of some other drivers just becomes amusement. I kind of pity them with their high stress levels - it's so unnecessary

That rant was great btw

irwin7638

I always like it when somebody passes me and or honks, only to see me move past them to the head of the line at the next light. People have no clue what stop and go traffic does to their average speed. I drove through town recently, using the busiest and most common route, then did the same the next day on my bike. I only saved 5 minutes in the car.

Marc

FunkyStickman

Great rant... once upon a time, I was on the recieving end of that sentiment. Now, I'm lucky if I drive my car at all. What changed? My attitude.

himespau 

And that's without having to find a parking spot (something hard here in Boston).

kaimat

I got rear ended by a 16 year old girl (I assume there is a way to say this that doesn't sound disgusting lol) back in June and since then I've suffered from sever paranoia that the person behind me is gonna crash into me again lol. Because of this I now always leave five or six car lengths in front of me, giving me plenty of time to slowly come to a stop (and giving the person behind me plenty of time to see my brake lights).

cppb

This thread is right on. I recently got a new job in Nashville that requires me to commute every day by car. Previously, I did about 90% of my transport by bike, but the lack of public transit now has me in a car for more than two and a half hours every day for a 70 mile round trip. The only upside to being stuck in a car for that much time is that I get to think about the potential for more efficient transportation systems; unfortunately, the majority of these solutions involve what this thread has pointed out: that most, if not all, of our congestion problems can be solved by people knowing how to drive properly.

It still amazes me that on a five lane road, all five lanes get slowed down every time there is an on-ramp. Yes, more cars entering the road is likely to cause some slow-down, but it should not turn 70mph traffic into a parking lot for 50 yards. Yet, people not knowing how to merge, wanting to cross four lanes of traffic to get off, and the aformentioned "slam on the gas, slam on the brake" phenomena combine to ruin it for everyone.

mnemia

The big problem is that some of this is more of a GROUP behavior than just individual behavior. People behave this way because they're part of a loosely regulated group of interacting people, and they perceive driving that way as the best way to jockey for position in the big, frustrating crush of traffic. Since we don't have a good way to enforce laws against aggressive driving, I don't think the problem will be solved until perhaps we have computers controlling at least some aspects of the group behavior. Then we could have a centralized system working towards a global optimum "solution" to route all the cars where they need to go as quickly as possible. Since it wouldn't be every driver for themselves anymore, we could eliminate some of the behavior that causes problems, such as needless lane changes.

degnaw

When driving in heavy traffic, I try to challenge myself to see if I can drive without using the brakes at all (if it's very heavy traffic, that changes to not coming to a dead stop at any point). Leaving a gap works really well.