If I remember correctly, that question likely refers to some argument in the driving manual about speeding.

Something along the lines of "speeding in most urban areas doesn't actually help get someone to their destination faster. There are always multiple traffic lights and other cars to contend with, so it's not helpful to go over the speed limit and it increases the risk and severity of an accident." It's perfectly solid advice, who hasn't been passed aggressively by an ah-ole with tinted windows only to catch up to them at every traffic light?

The question obviously wants to screen for that tidbit of knowledge, but it's not phrased rigorously enough for the HN-crowd, I guess.

Isn't there some confirmation bias (not sure if that's necessarily the correct term here, but you'll get the gist regardless) here in that you're more likely to remember the situations in which you catch up with the person who passed you (i.e. "look at this idiot getting nowhere"), and less likely to remember the situations in which that person makes a light that you don't and you never see them again? Massively depends on the specifics of the roads you're on too of course (and also how the lights are timed).

Years ago the did an experiment in Germany (I know, a one time test with 2 cars/drivers is more or less anecdata).

The task was to drive from Duesseldorf to Munich. Two identical cars, two very experienced drivers. one was told to go as fast as possible without breaking speed limits on the way (we don't have a general speed limit on the German Autobahn (highway)) tthe oother ro drive at a relaxed 120 km/h were possible and also honor speed limits.

Both were equipped with EEG (heart rate and stuff).

The driving distance is slightly above 600km.

The first drive (as fast as possible) arrived first. Waiting for the relaxed driver to come in second. That happened 20 minutes later. So on a trip of > 5 hours the gain was 20 minutes.

But at what cost. The EEG told a story of pure stress, massive heart rate spikes even for an experienced driver like the one behind the wheel. While the other one came in not only at a relaxed speed but a way more relaxed body and mind.

Medical doctors concluded that the EEG of number two was way more healthy.

Btw: One reason why the first car was only 20 minutes quicker was the fact that the driver had to stop to refuel. This cost him minutes. While the second driver arrived with gas to spare. So even economically it made sense to drive a relaxed style. Not to speak of the ecological aspect.

So to wrap up. The fast driver often comes in first. But not as quick as the feel they are. And at a high price.

Counter anecdata. I monitor my heartrate (along with other relevant statistics like speed, distance, elevation, and barometric pressure) while engaged in activities like mountaineering. Even when I'm not physically straining myself but just carefully traversing an exposed face, I don't consider a raised heartrate there 'less healthy' in and of itself because it's a side-effect of the excitement I'm feeling, and that feeling (sometimes not necessarily in the moment, but always afterwards) gives me an overall sense of improved wellbeing. Do I get stressed out sometimes? Sure, it's a dangerous activity. But overcoming that and accomplishing my goal rewards my mental health in a different way. Only half tongue-in-cheek: Maybe the faster driver was simply having more fun?

In this case you're probably right that the faster driver was just more stressed for no real benefit, but an EEG is not always a good proxy for how "healthy" something is (even ignoring obvious cases like physical exertion).

If you have a link to the study I'd love to read more.

EDIT:

One other thing I missed on the first read of your comment was the fact that the driver was instructed to "drive as fast as possible" and then given access to roads with no speed limits. I feel like that would have the potential to exacerbate the 'negative' side of things and that a more reasonable middle-ground could be found both in terms of driver stress and also fuel economy.

To clarify:

The spikes and reactions were stress reactions measured by medical doctors from the monitoring of multiple signals (heart rate being one).

So they came to the experimental conclusion that (at least in this experiment) driving at the limit of what was possible in terms of speed the car could go and speed traffic would somehow allow was a factor of stress for the driver.

They also qualified the added amount of fuel necessary to drive the distance.

But they did not say one was better, one was worse. They just let the viewer decide on which variant they preferred.

And as I said: If the externalities were priced into taxes and cost of fuel - why not let people and the market decide if it was worth to them to arrive 20 minutes quicker on this distance.

Along those lines there's a notable pop-sci book by Robert Sapolsky, "Why Zebra's don't get ulcers" (https://www.amazon.com/Why-Zebras-Dont-Ulcers-Third/dp/08050...).

Basically this guy made his scientific career by doing epic experiments where he observed communities of baboons during various social interactions, blow-gunned individual baboons with tranquilizers, then very quickly, took samples of their blood to analyze glucocorticoids (these are stress-response hormones and have a half-life measured in minutes).

Anyway, crudely stated, the major finding is that animals have intense episodic stress throughout their lives but never suffer health consequences from that stress because it's occasional. Humans, on the other hand, can get the same levels of "fight-or-flight" stress but at long-lived, daily intervals. Excessive glucocorticoids, over a long term, can interfere with the normal functioning of the body and precipitate a wide variety of health problems including heart-disease (and ulcers, as the title suggests).

In the case of driving, an aggressive lane-changing drive in a fast car might be exhilarating under certain conditions, but it's a different story for a daily commute. It's no accident that the advice given to people that experience aggressive drivers on the road is often along the lines of "Let him go, don't become a part of his bad day." Aggressive driving is a self-reinforcing bad habit that becomes part of people's identity in many cases. Personally, I don't care about the health of aggressive drivers, but I do care about their propensity to cause accidents and hurt innocent people.

> but I do care about their propensity to cause accidents and hurt innocent people

Absolutely agree. I live in a 30km/h zone (regular speed in a city is 50km/h in Germany). And we have speeders every day. While kids are playing and elderly people trying to cross the streets.

What I wanted to say:

I care - and we petitioned the city to at least have marked parking spaces implemented with big flower pots on every side to at least reduce the speed people can go here.

There's that, but there's also the possibility that it's conflating two things: If you're speeding, you'll also have to go around cars that aren't, which reminds me of this one about weaving between lanes vs sticking to one lane that the Mythbusters tested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZefgUVg3qx0 (4 minute long cut of segments from the episode).

They found that weaving between lanes is faster, but not by very much depending on which lane you're comparing it to. The final result (shown at 3:54 in the link) was:

* Weaving between lanes: 1h 16m

* Lane 1: 1h 19m

* Lane 2: 1h 20m

* Lane 3: 1h 29m

* Lane 4: 1h 33m

Lanes 1 and 2 are close enough I can imagine it being chance and more tests resulting no noticeable difference. And for an over-an-hour drive, it's already no reasonable difference anyway.

This basically just says you have to know which lane will usually be faster and why.

If you know the area and traffic patterns you can do that and basically stick to your lane for long periods and just switch a few times. I have something like that on my pre-covid commute for example, where you have to be in the right most lane until between a certain off ramp and the corresponding on ramp. There's always lots of traffic and you go between 10 and maaaybe 40 km/h. There you switch to the leftmost land so that you don't get bogged down by the regular mergers from the on ramp in the right lane and the 'middle lane drivers' who merge into the middle lane right about there too. Then until the next on ramp you stay on the left lane but have to switch over to the right lane again because no trucks allowed on it and most people try to pass on the left lane while everyone else is stuck with middle lane drivers and trucks.

If you know the area in the above example, just choose lane 1 for sanity. If you don't know the area and happen to stick to lane 4,id rather try weaving to be honest.

On the other hand, if you are driving on the interstate highways across the USA, driving 85 mph instead of the 65 mph limit will save you roughly 3 hours from an 800-mile journey.

it isn't true though. suppose there are n lanes and more than n cars, which is almost always the case in the city. if you pass someone, even just to end up stopped at the same light, you are still ahead of them in line. moving ahead by one slot is a very marginal gain, but it does add up if you pass many cars on your journey. in addition to being ahead by however many slots, eventually you will encounter step-wise jumps in travel time where you get through a yellow but the person right behind you has to stop.

over enough journeys, driving faster will always decrease your average travel time (unless you crash or get pulled over, I guess). the way to discourage people from speeding is not to tell them something obviously wrong, but to discuss the legal/safety risks and the increased gas and brake pad consumption. I understand that I can get places faster by speeding in the city, but I don't do it because, to me at least, the gains are marginal compared to the risk, cost, and stress.

> [...] eventually you will encounter step-wise jumps in travel time where you get through a yellow but the person right behind you has to stop.

Keep in mind that driving manuals are deliberately written at a 6th to 9th grade reading level depending on the state.

Yes, you're right that the gains from speeding are marginal compared to the risk, cost, and stress. But it's hard to communicate that kind of nuance. If the manual just says lead-foots aren't going to get somewhere faster by speeding to each intersection that's "good enough" and very close to reality for the purpose of the manual. National merit semifinalists can get the queue-theory version from their high-school math/driving instructor during driver's ed.

>the way to discourage people from speeding is not to tell them something obviously wrong, but to discuss the legal/safety risks and the increased gas and brake pad consumption.

Is it though? Almost all the knowledge we have is taught using flawed and simplified models that we can niptick and find "obviously wrong" when deeply examined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein%27s_ladder

And IME, when I'm explaining something, pedantry and specifics almost always get my audience confused more than help to get the point across.

I was taking a firearms safety course and there was a true/false section on a test. I can’t recall what the question was specifically but it was about which laws something fell under and the main issue was the word ‘or’ - when used as a logical OR the answer was True. When used as a sort of common day ‘or’ the answer was probably false.

I put false without thinking. I had everything else on the test right and part of the course was the instructor reviewing your test and going over your incorrect answers. He wasn’t a programmer (I think former military tbh) and didn’t really understand why I got it wrong even after I explained it…

What other meaning of the word "or" is there?

In common usage, "or" is usually taken to mean exclusive or (XOR). Logical OR is non-exclusive. In most cases you can infer which is meant from context or it doesn't actually matter (much).

On a test for a gun license, it could get a little squishy as there are likely questions about the law (which only sometimes aligns with common sense) translated into lay English (which lacks the degree of precision you would likely find in the actual legal phrasing).

From Reddit ELI5:

"Cream or Sugar, in coffee is OR it means one the other or both

Fish or Chicken, for dinner is XOR it means one or the other not both."

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4v6dcd/c...

Let's just imagine (for the sake of an argument) that you're just about to be given a roadside alcohol breath test by a police officer, but in this universe having just eaten fish or chicken can cause a false positive. The officer asks you if you had eaten fish or chicken recently. In fact, you had both fish and chicken in your last meal an hour ago (don't ask). You should answer "yes".

Most cases where "or" is taken to mean xor are actually asking for a choice, expecting one of the options as an answer. If the "or" is part of a question expecting a yes/no answer, then it is much harder to justify it being an xor.

I imagine they could ask questions like, "should you point the barrel at the ground or check the chamber for a bullet?" and you might say "or?" NO stop you need to do both, while the expected answer is YES you idiot you need to do both. Sometimes you just can't win.

distinction between inclusive and exclusive or

XOR.

Actually, as worded, I think "no" is technically the correct answer to that. The current projected/expected arrival time would be altered at the time that you begin driving more quickly, but the planned arrival time is ossified before you start the car.

Yeah, I couldn't find the specific wording right now and whether there was some sort of plausible play with the word "planned". This question is also translated.

Ah okay, that makes sense.

Actually I managed to find out the exact wording of the question, it was fairly different from what I remembered:

What affects the duration of a planned journey?

a) Length of the journey.

b) Maximum speed in few lone sections of the journey.

It uses checkboxes, so you can check both.

They expect you to check only a), but b) is in my view also logically correct answer as if at any section even if it's shorter than 1 metres, if your max speed nears 0, duration of your journey will reach infinity. But it is worded in such a way that most people will get the hint that B) should not be checked.

While we are at looking at it pedantically (keeping also in mind that you said it's translated) I think their expectation of the answer is fair and they give more than a hint on it as well. Like you'd be stupid not to know what answer they want you to check.

"few" and "lone sections". As in statistically irrelevant. The assumption is that people 'get' for example (and its being taught over and over in driving school too) that if you speed to get through one traffic light in the city you'll not make it through the next one anyway and thus not really be faster. On the highway if you only speed once or twice for a short lone section you won't really notice in the end.

You don't even have to come at it with a nerd mathematicians mind and play tricks like Max speed near zero (not a realistic scenario so not something a driving exam would ask but definitely a fun scenario in a math lecture at university maybe). I can think of multiple sections in my city where speeding through the right traffic light when it's "cherry green" will net you a significant advantage because of the awful street and intersection layout and traffic light phases in that area. If you do the same just one traffic light after it though it won't help you at all because the next light will catch you unless you really want to cause an accident.

And if you are driving a 500km+ route and you can "speed" through it at 160+ km/h for a significant portion of it vs. going 120 that will save you a noticeable amount of time on the journey. This assumes something like Germany and your route being in parts with not many speed limits and not too much traffic so that you can comfortably cruise at 160 to 180 vs. arriving as a nervous wreck close to a heart attack because of all the near crashes from slowing down for the grandma going 100 switching to the left lane a few car lengths in front of you.

Ah okay, yeah, clearly would need to be checked then if they wanted a literal and honest answer.

> I don't remember if the wording was specifically like this [..]

You’ve just reminded me of a question I had on a driver’s test many years ago.

The free-response question was something like: “What is the single most important thing you can do to improve your safety as a driver?”

I answered: “Always drive sober.”

The “correct” answer was: “Fasten your seatbelt.”

I can only imagine the grader’s face / thoughts when they had to mark my answer as incorrect.

Certainly over longer distances and highway driving, driving faster will get you somewhere faster. In city driving though, where most people drive, it is correct that speeding up for certain portions of the journey will not get you there faster since the increased speed over short spurts can't make up for congestion, stop lights, etc.

Pretty much. Every EVIP (emergency vehicle incident prevention) course preaches this. The advantage to lights and sirens and opticom (the traffic light changing technology) is minimizing stop and go, and optimizing flow of traffic in your direction. They demonstrate that an extra 20mph on your average response, which is likely less than 3 miles (if not quite a bit less), and not much more than 5 until you start to get more rural, is likely only to save you seconds - and there's very very few things where an ambulance arriving literally seconds faster makes a difference in patient outcomes.

But it does slow your reaction time, and it does massively increase your accident risk. And that's couched in, "And now it's going to take many many more minutes for another unit to get to your patient than the few seconds you'd have saved".

Wow those sound like such badly designed questions. What country is this?

I don't know about that person, but a friend of mine from India was telling me about a driving test question there - [translated] "How far should you stay behind another car - A) 2 meters B) 2 seconds". Apparently the correct answer is 2 seconds. In my opinion, the question is weirdly ambiguous.

What's ambiguous about it? Two meters behind a car at highway speeds can get you killed.

If it were a question only about cars at rest it would be phrased something like "how far behind a car should you stop when queued" or something of that nature.

There are few places in India where you can drive at "highway speeds".

"Two seconds" is what I learned too. The book here says that you should be at the spot where the previous car was two seconds ago, which is good advice, as it's independent of speed.

You can think of it as "it'll take you one second to react and one to brake to a stop, so you should be two seconds away".

I guess two meters is sufficient when you drive a walking pace, but any faster than that two meters will be too little. You say that this was in India, and I'm guessing two meters is way too much in a traffic jam :-)

This makes sense to me. What matters is the reaction time and braking distance.

I’m curious, why do you think that’s ambiguous?