AutoNeurotica

Ok, so it's been a few days. The fender bender spooked me and I've been driving like an ADD feret on crack for a week but I've finally been able to settle down and observe in a more objective manner.

One thing I've noticed is that if I stay behind the car in front of me by an extra car length or two, it allows people to merge onto the highway, change lanes and turn out from side streets with more frequency. Yeah, so what, you might say. That's obvious. Well here's my thinking. If everyone stayed a few car lengths back, even when going slow, I think it would help overall traffic congestion. Put your mind at work here and go with me on this. If there were more gaps, more opportunities to merge or change lanes, wouldn't it help traffic jams? Traffic jams happen because there are too many cars trying to enter a highway. People have to slow down to allow other cars on and that backs up traffic behind them. If no one has to slow down because they're keeping more room in between them, the traffic jams should lessen, hypothetically.

Over all speeds may slow a touch because people are no longer racing to put their bumper into someone's trunk, but if you trade that with overall less congestion, I think the pay off is obvious.

At let's be fair, if you're on the highway, being right up on someone while you're going 10 mph is not going to get you to your destination any faster. You're still going to get there the same time as when you let a few cars merge in front of you. I've tried this and that is absolutely the case. I let in more cars one day than the last, it still takes me 30 mins to get home. No change.

Now the only way this will work is if more people do it. Obviously I can't lessen traffic jams on my own. One person doing this is only going to upset a few people behind me each day. So if you like this idea, try it out. It also has a side benefit that you can almost always keep moving. If you have more room in front, you don't have to stop, just slow down. By the time you get up to where the car is, it's already moving and you've never stopped. Better for your car. Unless of course there's an accident and traffic is just stopped. You can't get around that.

Now I'm not talking about coming up to a red light and leaving 3 car lenghts space, that's just silly. This is mainly for heavy traffiked highways and main roads. Give it a shot. Pass this entry along to friends and family. Let's get a grass root campaign going and see if this actually works. No one ever taught us in Driving School to tail people, this just makes sense.

With that in mind, that bitch who honked at me because I let someone in from a parking garage can blow me.