🚀 go-pugleaf

In <366D7A59.55E558FF@hp.com> Tedd McHenry <tedd_mchenry@hp.com> writes:

>The key words here, for me, are "total number of lane changes."  If I,
>as an individual driver, minimize the number of lane changes I make, I
>will almost certainy spend a lot of my time in a lane other than the one
>I should be in.  This will result in other drivers changing lanes more
>often than they otherwise would....

"Should be in" is hard to define.  Did you mean "want to be in"?

Safe drivers rarely end up on the highway on the spot they prefer.  They
do end up alive, more likely than not.

The highways are an excellent place to practice your negotiating skills,
and instead of just take take take, you will need to often yield to
benefit the safety of all.  You can't get everything you want -- at
least, not if you want to drive safely.

My guess is that the majority of highway accidents occur when the
negotiating process fails.  Two drivers play the game of "chicken", each
counting on the other to yield.  Sometimes they collide.  This game of
"chicken" usually involves lane changes.  The people who play this game
make a lot more lane changes.  The people most vehemently arguing that
lane changes do not cause accidents very likely include many who love
their game of "chicken" and don't want to give it up.

>The most effective thing I can do is
>practice good lane discipline.  For many people, that means changing
>lanes more often than they do now.  That will result in simpler traffic
>situations, which will result in fewer accidents.  

I would like us to find a good definition of 'good lane discipline'.  I
have seen this defined in many ways, but the loudest people on Usenet
seem to define it as 'everybody else keep right so I can have a lane to
myself'.  They want everybody else out of the left lane so they can have
it all to themselves.  In other words, they expect a highway lane
constructed at a cost of a few million dollars an inch to be left nearly
idle.  Except for their own vehicle, of course.  Makes no sense to me.
You would end up with say three lanes but only enough capacity to move
two lanes of traffic.  Result?  More traffic james and a long painful
drive.  Fill all available lanes, and you get much more capacity and you
use tax dollars more efficiently.

Do you live in an area where traffic will comfortably fit in N-1 lanes
when N lanes were constructed?  I don't.  Usually it's the other way
around, i.e., they have N lanes but you can see that you really need N+1
or N+2.  I am not talking about a few side streets, I am talking about
major highways that carry large volumes of traffic.  Have all the lane
discipline you want in your neighborhood where the streets are mostly
used by kids playing baseball or some such thing and where there are no
cars.  Leave the busy highways alone.

[ most points of advice skipped, some quoted for my comments ]

>(a)	Drive in the right lane and pass in the left lane.  

>(b)	When there are three lanes going the same way, drive in the right
>lane, pass in the center lane and, if necessary, pass in the left lane.  

>(c)	After you pass, move back to the right lane as soon as it is safe to
>do so.  

My own experience is that some people will prefer to go faster, and some
will prefer to go slower.  If slower traffic stays to the right, and
faster traffic stays to the left, nobody needs to change lanes.  Stay in
your lane and go with the traffic at a speed you prefer.  Repeated
lane-change is totally unnecessary.  Each lane of traffic is constantly
passing the traffic to its right.  There is no need to change lanes to
pass, then change back.  If you want to go at the same speed, stay in
the same lane.  If you want to go faster, move a lane to the left and
stay there.

>> On the ideal highway,
>> vehicles will enter the highway and move into some lane that is going at
>> a speed preferred by the driver.  Then the vehicle will stay in that
>> lane until it is ready to leave the highway....

>Rahul, that would only allow two speeds on a highway with two lanes
>going the same direction!  How would that work?...

Over some reasonable distance, each lane will have some average speed.
You can only have as many average speeds as you have lanes.  If you want
more average speeds, you will need more lanes.  Consider the consequence
of have vehicles moving at different speeds on the same lane.  Somebody
is going to collide with somebody quite soon.  Or somebody will need to
slow down, or speed up, so all vehicles approach a common average speed
in that lane.  This is simple physics.

>since we almost always enter the highway from the right, no one would
>ever use the left lane unless there was an "unexpected hazard."  (As an
>aside, there should never be "unexpected" hazards.)  This is not a
>workable system.  I encourage you to research this a little, Rahul.  You
>won't find any credible traffic engineer or driving instructor promoting
>what you suggest.

What if you want to go faster than traffic in the rightmost two lanes?
You move a lane ot the left.  There is no other way around this.  If you
simply pass and move back into your original lane, you aren't driving
faster any more.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@spams.r.us.com>
a2i communications, a quality ISP
    "Any idiot can avoid automobile accidents that are his own fault.  It
     takes skill to avoid accidents that are the *other* person's fault."