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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.