An excellently written instructional post on driving in heavy traffic. The only one to which I obviously object is #8, since I clearly am more important than everyone else around me. It probably just slipped Eli Fennell’s mind when he was writing that, or else he figured it was so obvious that everyone already knows it that there was no need to point out the exception.
Originally shared by Eli Fennell
Tips for Better Driving
1) Following closely behind someone’s bumper does not actually get you anywhere faster, except maybe to the hospital… by Ambulance, after the EMT’s ‘Jaws of Life’ you out of your vehicle. Which brings us to the closely related #2:
2) Leave spaces between your vehicle and the vehicle directly in front of you, with more spaces as speed increases, in your lane, and remember that people who do this themselves are not trying to slow you down in your journey, we’re trying to complete ours safely. The only way to ‘stop on a dime’ is if that dime is superglued to a brick wall, I don’t care what type of brakes you have. Anti Lock Brakes just keep your brakes from locking, they do not change the laws of momentum in the slightest degree. Leaving spaces also saves you gas, because every moment you’re forced to use your brakes to avoid rear ending the vehicle in front of you is gas wasted.
3) In wall-to-wall heavy traffic, there is no ‘Magic Lane’ that gets you where you’re going faster than the others. The fact that the lane next to you suddenly appeared to ‘open up’ is a temporary phenomenon, probably caused by someone from that lane switching to another. Too many drivers are like cats on a cold day trying to find ‘The Door To Summer’. They’re actually just slowing everyone down, themselves included. Change lanes in wall-to-wall traffic only if the lane you’re in is clearly, over a period of time, moving slower than another, or if you need to be in another lane for a reason.
4) Cars in 2017 come standard with an amazing safety feature that allows you to signal to others which direction you plan to turn. Use them. Which brings us to #5:
5) Someone using their turn signals to change lanes to get ahead of you is not racing you to the finish line, you do not need to accelerate and force them to drop back to get over (if they even can, which they can’t if there are people behind you riding your bumper as in #1 above, which may be why they’re trying to get ahead). Letting a car pass ahead of you will not appreciably delay your journey. The sole exception to this is when they are doing it to try to cut ahead in a long line of vehicles going somewhere, in which case, screw ’em!
6) No matter how fast you accelerate in stop-and-go traffic, it will not save you meaningful time beyond going the Speed Limit. Traffic signs and signals, and traffic congestion, do not care how fast you go between them. Related to #7:
7) There is no point whatsoever in accelerating to where you will have to stop anyways. Getting to a red light six seconds earlier will not save you time over the person six seconds slower if you both have to come to a full stop. It may even favor the slower person, if the light changes before they have to stop.
8) Everyone else on the road also has somewhere to be and some deadline to be there. You are NOT more important or more special or more entitled to get somewhere faster than the rest of us.
9) Nothing else in the world is more important while you are driving than paying attention to the road. NOTHING! End of story.
10) Assume everyone else on the road is an idiot and act accordingly. Conversely, do not be an idiot on the road, there are already enough of those.