Behaving rationally in a society means taking into account other people, as that’s literally what a society is. This is irrational and selfish behavior.
Its the same for everyone behind her as well, unless you forgot how lines work. Id rather stand still for 5 minutes and move 15 feet than 18 inchs every 30 seconds.
Have you never been to a busy airport before? The lines already fill the breezeway even when they move forward. What do you think is going to happen with the constant flow of people arriving at a line that doesn’t move? It’s going to quickly become a safety hazard.
This is exactly the mentality in the roads on my country “either way there’s traffic so I stop 10 meter from the car in front of me when on the traffic light” then less cars pass the light which means mor traffic waiting at the lights. People just do t get it but they only think about themselves
I hate it so much when people do that with their cars. It just makes the traffic jam much longer than it needs to be, possibly even extending it over the previous exit. It’s not rational, it’s just plain stupid and annoying.
I’m kinda in between. When the car in front of me drives off and stops I’ll creep slowly with my car 50% of the time I can keep a slow pace without start and stop.
That’s not a problem, in fact it even helps the flow. What I meant was when folks keep an excessive distance to the next car, like in the OP (that lady could advance like, 10 places or so, translated into car lengths that would be 50 meters).
There are people who literally turn off their engine and don’t start it again until they can go for 100 meters or more. This wastes road space and encourages lane-hopping, which also makes the traffic jam worse.
Depends. Bigger gaps mean the traffic jam will get better faster since it reduces the stop and go. Ofc the gaps need to be reasonable but the people driving bumper to bumper make it even worse
If everyone followed the one rule “keep as much space in front of me to the next car, as there is behind me to the next car, at all times” it would do the most to alleviate most traffic jams.
Sure…and if you were the 18 wheeler, you would give the proper stopping distance to the car in front of you, but it would be up to the person behind you to make sure they give you the same birth from behind. If they are on your (the 18 wheelers) ass, they would be causing traffic.
This isn’t meant to be a license to speed up it someone is riding your ass, it’s a rule that if EVERYONE followed, it would dramatically cut traffic jams.
Yeah, it’s really fun trying to “fix” minor traffic jams by holding back a while then moving forward very slowly. If you time it right you never catch up to the car in front, because they reach the front of the queue before you reach them. Then there’s no traffic jam left behind you, because everyone is moving.
i would literally go around her. if it’s all the same to you sweetie, i’ll just behave like a rational person and take all that open space up in line. ain’t nobody (normal) got time for that sh…
If someone askl her to move why don’t she ? As it don’t change anything out worlds both ways. In a society people take care each other. It’s just a stupid and childish behavior
Why would anyone aske her to move? It makes no difference how much space is in front of her. To me, creeping up on the people in front of you is the childish behavior.
Because we don’t know how much space is behind her, and the people waiting behind her. By her not moving to fill the available space, she may wind up causing people to overflow the line.
No, that’s what makes a queue a queue. Think if everyone in the queue acted like this, you wouldn’t have a queue, just a bunch of people standing around without organisation. We move up striaght away to maintain the structure of the queue so we can all tell where it starts and ends, who is I front of and behind who.
If we do not respect the core structure of a queue we surrender to discord and forsake the simple beauty and elegance of the queue and betray the civilation that queue allows us to make.
No, if everyone acted like this it would be a tightly packed queue apart from one gap near the start. There would only be a gap behind her if she was moving too quickly for the person behind her to bother moving, and the whole point is she’s not doing that. The one gap doesn’t matter because of the barriers.
This is why I hate airports. She’s right and her behavior actually makes it better for everyone, but people are too illogical to see it and get angry with her. There are simple logical solutions to every part of the airport experience, but people just do what they’ve always done or behave like dumb animals instead. Like rushing to be at the front of the boarding queue, when seats are reserved. Or crowding tight around the luggage return as if that makes your bag come faster, when if everyone stood back you could casually walk over and pick it up when it came.
you would be right, but the social construct of a line is one of managed movement. stand right behind the person in front of you, moving forward every time they adjust their standing position so you’re breathing down their neck the entirety of the queue? wrong. Stand there while a gap enough to fit 10 people opens in front of you? also wrong.
in the first scenario you’re making the person in front of you uncomfortable, in the second scenario you’re making the people behind you frustrated at the lack of movement.
you’re in a walking queue, if walking is inconvenient for you to such a degree that you can’t move forward with the pace of the line, then an accommodation such as a wheelchair, a luggage carrier, or checking in elsewhere should be arranged by you.
It doesn’t make it better, large gaps in the line extend the amount of space the line needs in the facility. During busy hours that would extend the line far out into areas needed for other things.
It’s only the same thing for the person leaving the gap, due to the fact that there’s ropes preventing people from getting between the person standing there and the person in front of them.
Also, if the gap gets big enough that the time spent gathering up your luggage and moving to the front of the line causes delays, those delays will add up during busy times.
It’s a game of chicken at that point, and if everyone acted like that, it would significantly increase wait times.
Counterpoint: Because you are not advancing, neither is everyone behind you. And as a result, the experience in the queue is one of stagnation, which makes waiting in the queue more frustrating until the very moment that it’s finally your turn.
So no, I think staying put while the queue ahead of you is moving is worse behaviour than creeping along.
Not quite, you are still aware numbers are being called and you can equate that to progress through the wait. It would be the same if they somehow concealed all sense of forward progress through the queue.
You can still see there are fewer people left in the queue… unless it’s really long and you’re far in the back, but then likely wouldn’t notice much of a difference either.
So because the customer service is so abysmal, we should voluntarily engage in our own little acts of self placation to compensate for the liveable hours we’re contributing to the system? That doesn’t seem healthy. Seems like a quick way to end up with absurdly long lines for no discernable benefit.
Had a guy losing his fucking mind behind me in bumper to bumper traffic. I always like to keep about 1.5ish vehicle length (obviously not a real metric, just a guess) between me and the person in front in case people need to switch lanes or if I’m hit from behind.
When I say the guy behind me was mad, he was fucking LOSING it. He was screaming, he was flailing his arms, he was beating on his steering wheel, he was honking a shit ton.
He eventually just cut the lane beside me and the person next to me, just to get into the 30 feet of empty space in dead slow traffic. No idea why he thought this would somehow make any difference.
I honked at him several times just to fuck with him
There’s something like a spring effect, you should try to keep the same distance between the car in front of you and the one behind you, watch this it’s very informative: youtu.be/iHzzSao6ypE
Most importantly you should do your best to drive at one, single, steady, speed, and not stop and go. In civilised countries that kind of thing gets taught in driving lessons, three or four people acting correctly can dissolve a traffic jam.
We (United States) were taught this in 1987 when I took drivers ed at school. When my oldest got her license there was no longer a driver’s ed course. Must have cost more than the conservatives wanted to pay.
It’s better to build multi million dollar football stadiums and buy sports equipment than it is to actually give an education, obviously. Why else would we send them to school everyday?
(sidenote: the real solution to traffic is getting all the reluctant and unnecessary drivers to not take the car during rush time. I.e. providing viable alternatives to driving & the freedom to choose the means by which to go from point A to point B)
My father taught me to leave enough space in front of me in case of being hit, but also in case I need to get out of the line for some reason. I’ve had to get out of line a number of times over the years due to accidents. I have 3 routes I can take to get to work, so once I realize there’s an accident I can just turn around and go another way. Works out well, but sure does piss off people behind me sometimes.
Most importantly, you need enough space to account for your reaction speed + the time your vehicle takes to brake. On slow traffic that’s one or two cars but as you approach highway speeds it’s like 15, which no one observes. And higher during snow or rain.
As if … Where’s he going? That many feet changes nothing. I live in a city famous for leaving a lot of space between cars, there are memes about it. So for this thread I’ll explain a couple of why’s:
Me personally , it became a habit when car jackings became a possibility. A less easy target mentality.
Insurance is crazy high here and so ,as you mentioned, the not being forced into the car ahead of you .
There have been multiple shootings in road rage in this city over the last year. Everyone kinda wants space and eyes on others or what may be happening, room to react or move. Also not into riding a cars bumper and maybe causing another incident.
I’m sure there are as many reasons as there are people, but these are the obvious ones.
But then the person behind her would just wait to move at all until she’s made it through, the line would continue to grow backwards and each next person would have further to walk, and have to have better prediction times/cause longer waits at the service till.
You can’t “reference a meme” whose text constitutes a response to the discussion (even modifying the quote to make it more applicable to the new situation) and then try to pupu someone when they comment on your response. You’re tryna have your cake, eat your cake, and deflect anyone who mentions that you ate your cake too. And that’s not allowed.
If you wanted to make a non-sequitur, you could have. But you chose to make use of a quote that (by omission of further context) espouses agreement albeit grudging agreement with one of the two prevalent positions being discussed and so you’re now in the discourse.
What is rational for YOU might not be optimal for SOCIETY. This is the first lessons taught to toddlers when they learn about social ettiquete and mores.
Lubricate don’t agitate, is another neat saying. Some things just help everyone stay calm and feel in control in shitty situations, it’s not the time to make edge lord points.
I think people are taking this to the extreme and talking about what would happen if the queue piles up behind her. But on a less dramatic level, maybe she’s just finishing the page of her book she’s reading, or finishing off writing a long and potentially important text - tasks which you’d rather get done in one go. The gap between her and the next person in queue is small enough that it could’ve happened all in one queue movement, and she’s just not instantly moving - she wants to finish her page.
Having been in queues in airports, the pressure put on you by the people behind you is ridiculous. It feels like if you spend 30 seconds not moving (nowhere near enough time to cause a pileup that spills into the walkable areas) people think you’re crazy, when in reality it just means picking up your bags less and getting to finish reading that task you’re doing
A perfectly rational agent should choose behavior that works when other agents apply the same behavior.
If everyone uses her strategy, the queue can only get shorter if there’s exactly one person left in the queue, but it gets longer each time someone joins it.
In an idealized world where everyone can instantly teleport, this doesn’t technically reduce the throughput of the queue, however it does still increase its size unnecessarily. (and in the real world it also decreases throughput, potentially by a significant amount if the queue is physically long enough)
Even granting that she doesn’t care about anyone else, the strategy is still slower for her even if she’s the only one using it.
Judging from the picture, she will lose at least a few seconds when the person in front of her leaves the queue and she still has to walk the remaining distance to the front of the queue.
For a more extreme example, imagine the queue is a kilometer long. Assuming everyone before her shuffled along like the average queue enjoyer, she would now be one person-width away from the goal had she shuffled along with them.
If she used her “perfectly rational” strategy instead, she would now have to walk a full kilometer which, being very generous to her, would cost her an additional 12 minutes.
Perfectly rational behavior, if your only objective is to annoy others.
(there is perhaps an argument in favor of some variant of her strategy, if there is a high time/effort/opportunity cost associated with starting and/or stopping, but I think realistically this will rarely if ever be the case in an airport security queue)
I think you’re there with the last bit of your comment. The goal isn’t to only move once, the goal is to minimise stops and starts. If everyone does this is a self sorting system. If someone has the rule “try to only move forward once every x minutes (unless you are at the front or the queue overflows)” then the queue gets into a rhythm that works.
In a queue like this there is extra effort in picking up your bags and stopping so the worst case scenario is everyone moving exactly as space is available.
Problem is that “unless the situation doesn’t allow it” means you have to constantly be aware of how the situation is evolving, so you’re trading “move your bag a couple extra times” for “stay hyper aware of the environment and ensure you’re not starting a chain reaction of assholery” cause that can happen real quick at an airport.
I have agreed with that first line of yours for a long time. Some of the behaviors that seem the most asshole-ish in other people are those that both would cause chaos if everybody did it, and are easy to avoid or fix.
I guess that’s why even mundane things like this lady in line or shitty parking make people stand out is such a bad way.
Well put. There’s just something about airports that turns off people’s cooperative reasoning abilities. I’m sure I’m guilty in numerous ways too, but when I really focus on the little things that people do with complete disregard for others, it just makes me feel like they simply don’t care about anyone else but themselves. Most of the time I’m sure I’m just being uncharitable, but other times…!
Nah, move your ass forwards. It’s no different to you right there in that point in the line.
But at the back of the line its no longer people queuing in the barriers, they have started making up their own queue which has now branched off in two directions and new people arent sure which branch to join. Other people are trying to get to something on the other side of these queues and have to squeeze past people.
I get the logic, and it’s quite a good point if you have unlimited space for the queue, but stop being so entitled and move your stinky ass up the queue.
You can’t even see the line behind the lady that is stopped. We have no perspective here. Looks empty from this specific angle, but what’s behind her in the line? There could be hundreds of people for all we know.
She’s not on trial, there’s no punishment for judgement. We are discussing that the situation that is being caused is non-optimal for society and you should tend to move forward with the line at a comfortable pace.
There’s very little upside for leaving that giant gap, and quite a bit of downside if you don’t pay perfect attention to the full situation in front and behind (which you aren’t doing if you’re staring at your phone…)
Another point is the perception of progress. We all enjoy a progress bar that gradually fills up to one that sits at 20% then jumps to 100. It reduces our anxiety.
Where am I going? To make room for people trying to clear the intersection behind me. Failing to pull forward means they’re either stuck on the far side for another cycle of the light or they’re going to block the intersection. With really busy intersections leaving those big gaps can make a huge impact on traffic trying to get through the one behind you.
Even more fundamental than signal cycles, you’re moving out of the way for people still driving forward behind you. Creating gaps in traffic is what causes spontaneous traffic jams behind you that can last for hours.
Agree if you are talking about people who edge over the line at the front of the queue but leaving massive gaps between you and whoever is in fro t causes issues further back.
You could be creating a block at a joining road behind you. You could be blocking a filter lane for traffic making a left/right turn from a dual carriageway.
Just move your car forward and remember that you dont know what issues your decision might cause and its a little self entitled to assume everyone else is just waiting in the same line as you.
Oh, certainly if it’s a significant gap, more than a car length more than I would normally stop, I’ll shift forwards, especially in high density situations (if nobody is behind me and I’m not blocking a laneway, then I’ll probably just sit there).
Something to add to the consideration is that I drive standard, so moving a small amount is a lot more difficult for me than most drivers, and takes more active effort. Most AT drivers just release the brake for a few seconds and they can close the gap. I have to release the clutch and possibly press the throttle to ensure the engine doesn’t stall… Etc.
I’ll still do it, but my tolerance for a gap in front of me is much higher than others.
Fair enough. I may have taken meaning that you didnt intend from your comment. I had assumed you were purposfully holding up traffic because you were teying to point out somebody else being dumb on the road.
This is a real pain in the ass if you drive manual:
Auto cars relax pressure on brake pedal to inch forward;
Manual cars take foot off brake, drop clutch, engage gear, engage clutch, move forward, drop clutch and engage brake again, gear to neutral, foot off clutch.
I’m sure all this inching forward happened a lot less when most cars were manual (Europe).
Idk if it’s ok to do but I’ve always just: keep it in first and clutch + brake -> bite on the clutch and swap to accelerator a smidge to move forward in traffic. Doesn’t bother me much tbh but I’ve never driven an automatic so idk if I’m missing out.
I’m also a MT driver. I’ve driven my fair share of AT’s though. With an AT, it’s always pushing forward, so the brake is actually working against the idle force of the engine, so simply releasing the brake causes forward movement.
I too sit at most lights while standing on the clutch and brake while in first. It’s the MT “ready to go” stance to me. For very long lights, I’ll kick it into neutral and take my foot off the clutch, but for the most part, in active traffic, I’ll just stand on it, because the light usually isn’t long enough for me to reposition that much…
It’s far easier to do as you say, as a veteran of MT driving, newbies will struggle, as they do. To be fair, I’d do the same as you, but I’m still very pragmatic about when I do it.
Yeah it’s definitely a different kettle of fish when you’re on a hill in traffic and swapping to the handbrake constantly, I think that’s where newbies really struggle.
I’ve only been driving since 2012 so I wouldn’t call myself a veteran since I know a few delivery drivers and the difference in experience is unreal lol
That’s probably around when I got behind the wheel of my first standard, and I’ve driven a MT car as my main, daily driver, ever since. And I drive most days for at least 30 minutes a day any day I drive.
You’re probably better than you give yourself credit for. By no means am I a perfect MT driver, but I can definitely drive manual very adequately, at least as well as I can drive an AT vehicle, which is what I learned on in the mid 2000’s. I had the benefit of 5+ years of driving before I started with a MT vehicle, then drove nothing but manual for over 10 years.
15 years of driving + 10 of that being on a manual, means I’m very much not new at it.
Do you generally prefer a manual then? I had a big gap because I was banned from driving due to health issues and a couple years on top without a car so I wouldn’t say I’m fully seasoned but I definitely know what I’m doing. At least enough to have some bad habits lol!
Generally, yes. Manual has a lot of advantages IMO. One notable disadvantage is starting on an uphill like you’ve mentioned.
For me, it makes me more concentious. I’m paying more attention to my speed, to the people around me, and what’s going on with my car. Some things are a bit more annoying, like stop and go situations, but not unreasonably more irritating than an AT, and usually fairly rare.
The most common and most troubling situation that I find myself in, living next to a fairly large hill in the landscape (about a 15% grade or so, for about 50-90m of elevation), is when people go up hills unreasonably slowly. My MT isn’t powerful, it’s a 4cyl 2012 civic (1.5? L engine IIRC), so to get the torque required to scale the hill, I’m already downshifted, and I need to maintain a certain level of RPMs to keep in the power band, which means I need to maintain speed going up the hill to successfully get up the hill. Accelerating is difficult, so I’d rather start at a healthy speed and RPM (in or near the power band), and maintain that condition until I’m at the top of the hill. When people drive slowly up the hill, or slow down while ascending, or even stop on the hill (oh god no), I get worried that even while downshifting, I’ll lose enough speed that my only viable option to continue is to stop, go back to first and try again, and if there’s people behind me, it’s very likely they won’t understand what’s happening, pull up too closely, and not give me enough room to drift while I get going… Cue the handbrake trick. I suck at heel/toe pedal work, so I don’t really have another viable option, and if it’s slippery (wet/snow/slush/ice), it would require me to turn around and go back down, then try the hill again with (hopefully) fewer other cars in my way, so I can maintain enough speed to climb the hill successfully.
This has happened. It’s rare, and bothersome, but it doesn’t push me away from using and preferring MT over AT.
The very few times I’ve been in that spot, generally I have to waive people passed, once it’s clear, let my car roll backwards and do a sort of backwards three-point-turn, to face down. Once at the bottom of the hill, I duck into a parking lot (hopefully one that’s empty), and wait for a large gap in traffic, then start my journey back up the hill, trying to leave enough space in front that even if the vehicles ahead slow down, I can still maintain my speed up the hill to the top without catching up to them. I’ll generally start at a slower speed in a lower gear to ensure I cannot catch up to those in front of me.
Like I said, it’s rare. I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to try again on a slippery hill, on one hand for over 10 years of driving a manual… And I’d have fingers to spare. So once every 3-4 years or more. Over time, I’ve gotten better at the handbrake trick and downshifting, that I need to go back and try again, less and less.
This is honestly one of the worst situations you could be in while driving a manual. I have not had to find a different way around because I wasn’t able to take on any condition because of my manual, and more often than not, I can get out of situations where I’d otherwise be stuck in an AT, by just manipulating my MT just so… Like rocking the car out of a rut (in snow/ice/mud), by feathering the clutch in time with the vehicle movements… This is something that’s much harder in an AT given that the motors force at idle is always pushed to the tires through the torque converter, so letting the car roll backwards, is always going to be less effective in an AT unless you’re constantly shifting in and out of neutral, which isn’t exactly a good thing to do to your transmission in an AT vehicle.
I could probably go on and on about challenges that AT’s face that MT’s can make quick work of with a reasonably seasoned driver behind the wheel, but I think I’ve painted a pretty clear picture.
I feel this pain. I’m a MT driver, it’s part of the reason I’m very pragmatic about when I creep forward… If I’m going to move forward just a little bit, I’m going to need a pretty good reason to do so; thus I try to be very observant to what’s going on around me, specifically regarding if the gap in front of my is negatively affecting the movement of vehicles in my immediate area, like blocking laneways or slip lanes, etc. If I’m not creating a problem with where I am, I don’t bother moving.
I always stop at intersections even if the light is green when it is clear that there’s nowhere to go because traffic is backed up to a standstill. Where I come from people would honk at you and then pass you so that they can get stuck in the intersection and cause a traffic jam, then they give you the finger and scream at you out the window like its your fault. Savages
Have you ever considered that this extends the backup for those behind you? That it actually does take time for your car to decelerate when you’re stopping at the green light, in addition to the fact that it takes more time for multiple cars to pull off in series per car than just one? How about stop trying to be quirky and just go through the green light like a normal person?
In almost every jurisdiction on earth, you aren’t allowed to block an intersection. OP is doing the right thing by waiting on the other side of the intersection for space to move into. If anything they’re avoiding traffic by not blocking the tangent lane of cars at the next light.
Exactly. I’ve been fucked far too many times by the behavior the guy above you is condoning. People who block intersections are as much a part of the traffic problem as weavers, left lane cruisers, tailgaters, cutters, and all the jerks who deny zipper merging.
Valid. I missed the getting blocked into the intersection part because that feels like a given. Why even say anything at that point? It’s a very mundane thing to say that you follow the rules of the road.
That’s on me for looking for the argument before reading to understand.
Have you ever considered that in most places it’s literally illegal to block an intersection, and that if there is not space to proceed through the intersection you’re supposed to stop before it?
The problem with this is if it’s a long enough line, there could be a persom trying to get into a turning lane and they can’t because you have a big ass gap between you and the car in front. That means the person could miss their light because they can’t get over.
It’s fine if you look behind you and you’re not cutting someone off from a light or turning.
If I can’t get in the turning lane I’m sitting behind the last person who is, most people in my state recognize this as totally fine and will deal with the lane blockage
I agree. I try to keep my situational awareness at very high levels while I’m behind the wheel, so in high density traffic, I’m looking for issues exactly like you describe. I’ll move if there’s enough room to move into and I see something that might be solved simply by moving (or I’m unable to rule out that it won’t help, due to being unable to see enough).
I don’t live or drive in areas where the traffic is so dense and the spacing of the lights is so short that this is a problem.
I tend to notice, frequently, if there’s any issues like this in my immediate area, like blocking a laneway or people getting stuck in an intersection or behind it, and I react accordingly… Sometimes packing myself against the car in front of me, far closer than I normally would to try to fix such problems behind me. I’m sure I don’t notice 100% of the time, but I’ll notice an issue and creep forward to less than a foot to the vehicle in front of me, to make space so the person behind can move to clear a laneway where someone is stuck, only to have the person behind me not notice that I’ve moved, and continue blocking the laneway.
I’m pragmatic about it. If there’s no good reason to shift forwards, I will probably just wait where I am. Once the light goes green though, I’ll close the gap pretty quickly.
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