Re:Traffic Simulator
by acdha on Thursday January 07, 2021 @07:08PM
(#25679501)
> In DC, people carefully adhere to red lights, stop signs, pedestrians, etc but will go far, far out of their way to block you from changing lanes once they see your turn signal go on.
The last part, yes, but the first half has very much not been my experience here in DC. I usually see at least one driver blow a stop sign, red light, or one-way street before I make it 2 blocks from my house. The other thing I found amazing is that it's totally normed that you can just park in the traffic lane whenever you want — not just FedEx/Amazon but I've seen people park downtown at rush hour, get their dry cleaning, and get back in their car as if it was normal.
I think the main cause here is that we have a bunch of poorly-trained commuters from suburbs where they're used to high speed limits and wide, less used roads but the traffic means they're lucky to average 5mph on their commute into the city and a certain fraction of people cut any corner they can because they think they're owed a higher average speed. They're “running late” every day because they don't want to admit that their “30 minute commute” is off by a factor of 2-3. I'm curious whether the pandemic will lead to people trying to stay at 100% telework after realizing how much better life is without spending a couple hours a day stuck in traffic.
The last part, yes, but the first half has very much not been my experience here in DC. I usually see at least one driver blow a stop sign, red light, or one-way street before I make it 2 blocks from my house. The other thing I found amazing is that it's totally normed that you can just park in the traffic lane whenever you want — not just FedEx/Amazon but I've seen people park downtown at rush hour, get their dry cleaning, and get back in their car as if it was normal.
I think the main cause here is that we have a bunch of poorly-trained commuters from suburbs where they're used to high speed limits and wide, less used roads but the traffic means they're lucky to average 5mph on their commute into the city and a certain fraction of people cut any corner they can because they think they're owed a higher average speed. They're “running late” every day because they don't want to admit that their “30 minute commute” is off by a factor of 2-3. I'm curious whether the pandemic will lead to people trying to stay at 100% telework after realizing how much better life is without spending a couple hours a day stuck in traffic.