(This is probably not the right venue for this diatribe, but its my blog so I am going to post it here anyway... Merry-Death, I promise the other blog we talked about will be next)
"I guess in preparation for the snow tomorrow there has been a preemptive strike of douche bags on the road tonight. Geez guys! Wtf?!?"I realized earlier, people REALLY need to get their shit together when commuting! Especially when you are traveling on a toll road. Commuting is a team sport. All it takes is one asshole to screw everything up, and then everyone loses. You end up with those "WTF ARE YOU DOING" moments, "Phantom Traffic Jams", "Road Rage" and that general desire to bang your head against your steering wheel until you lose consciousness thereby not having to deal with it anymore for that day.
"WTF ARE YOU DOING!?!"When you receive a toll ticket
(I am a bit skeeved by EZ-Pass and its traceability so I don't have one), what do you do with it so it is in a safe place? Do you put it in your wallet? Does it go in your sun visor? In a pack of cigarettes? In my case it goes in the compartment under the radio WITH the money for the tolls which I put there before I turn the car on. Actually it sticks out of the compartment, so I don't have to even LOOK in order to get everything together to pay the toll AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. Why? Because I have a deep and abiding fear of being... "THAT person".
When I say "THAT person", I mean the freaking idiot
(that is meant as a completely technical term, as we ALL look at that person and mutter under our breath "expletive IDIOT!") who gums up the carefully oiled machine that is your daily commute, ordering coffee, getting lottery tickets or any of a number of other seemingly simple actions. Every person is a cog in an unbelievably complex machine, and and all it takes is one or two of "THAT person" to throw a massive monkey wrench into everything. We have all dealt with them, some of us may actually BE that person without even realizing it. I had a run in with "THAT person" today while waiting to pay a toll.
I am not sure what the exact nature of the issue, all I know is that I sat with a truck grumbling and honking slowly crawling its way into my back seat, while the guy in front of me TORE HIS CAR APART looking for something. I saw this coming as when I pulled up, the car finally crept forward to the toll taker's window. Unfortunately, by then it was too late, I had the jacked up pick up truck behind me so I couldn't reverse the hell out of there and go to another lane. I have to assume the difficulty was a lost toll ticket since I watched the guy in front of me check his visor no less than 5 times
(just an observation... if it wasn't there the first two times, it will not magically *bamf* its way there just to piss you off!). As I have said previously, I keep my toll money & ticket in the same place EVERY time I travel on a toll road, so this was exceptionally frustrating for me since I was completely ready to pay and leave as soon as possible
(I was less than 5 miles from home). Apparently it was even MORE frustrating for the dude behind me who was using his horn to encourage "THAT person" to get his ass moving. About 5 minutes later, either after the toll collector took pity on the guy, or he found his ticket and moved on, the toll collector looked at me and quipped: "How frustrating was that idiot!?!" I laughed and told him the douche bags are out in force due to the impending snow. Sadly, I wasn't joking.
Wasn't it
Elizabeth Barrett Browning who said in regards to people like "THAT person":
"How douche-y are thee? Let me count the ways"?
"Phantom Traffic Jams"In April 2010, I read an article on the Daily Mail about those weird traffic jams which appear to have no cause, but are endlessly frustrating for people who commute. Now here is the reason this article, and the paper it was based on, interested me so much; it was written by a mathematician. Yeah, there aren't enough questions to be answered in the universe, we have to come up with the scientific reason we get stuck in traffic.
"Yesterday it was revealed that phantom traffic jams - queues of stationary cars that develop for no apparent reason - can be caused by the actions of just one driver.Dr Eddie Wilson, from the University of Bristol, unveiled research showing that, under the right conditions, one individual's bad driving can create 'a traffic tsunami which can affect traffic up to 50 miles away'.
Working with a team of fellow mathematicians, Dr Wilson analysed driver behaviour on a 10-mile stretch of the M42, which is one of Britain's busiest stretches of motorways.
While accidents did cause tailbacks, the researchers found that the major cause of congestion was nothing more sinister than sharp braking, unnecessary lane changes and lorries overtaking one another.
Under the right conditions, any one of these innocuous events can create the 'perfect storm' which Dr Wilson said can lead to 'traffic chaos'." (1.)
Dr. Wilson is not the only mathematician who has been working on the mathematics of phantom traffic jams, but the conclusion by MIT is slightly different than that of University of Bristol:
"The observation that simple, purely deterministic traffic models possess jamiton solutions indicates that phantom traffic jams are not necessarily caused by individual drivers behaving in a "wrong" way. In fact, they can even occur if all drivers behave by the exact same laws. In the considered traffic models, two key effects work towards the occurrence of phantom traffic jams: first, denser traffic travels slower; and second, it takes a certain "adjustment time" for drivers to react to new traffic conditions. These effects are counter-acted by a certain tendency of the drivers to drive preventively. In light traffic, the good effects dominate. In heavy traffic, the bad effects prevail. Hence, phantom traffic jams are probably an unavoidable feature of traffic flow. Benefits of a better understanding of jamitons
Real traffic possesses jamitons. Hence, a better understanding of their structure can be beneficial for the simulation and prediction of real highway traffic. Furthermore, the research can be one step towards answering the key question "how can the occurrence of phantom traffic jams be avoided". The occurrence of jamitons depends on the model parameters, such as road capacities, speed limits, and driving behavior. A deeper understanding of jamitons may give indications on how to lower peak densities, and how to shift the critical threshold density at which jamitons occur upwards. The latter may be achieved by electronic devices that assist the drivers' behavior in a subtle fashion." (2.)
This is not only an issue mathematicians have been working on. Physicist have been working on it as well.
"We treat traffic as a chemically reacting gas," he said. In the research team's eyes, traffic flow is a gas and the start of a traffic jam is explosion and that force ripples outwards, engulfing everything in its path. When math formulas are applied to Flynn's model he can tell how quickly a traffic jam starts and how severe it will become." (3.)
My feelings on all of this can be boiled to a much easier premise:
Don't be a douche bag: Cutting people off, break checking, and generally behaving like an asshole in heavy traffic won't get you there any faster. In fact, it will slow down the rest of us, if not get some of us killed!
"Road Rage"We have all dealt with the person (hell some of us have BEEN the person, I was totally guilty of it for YEARS) who rides your ass like its their job, comes flying around you on the right, and squeezes themselves into the miniscule gap between you and the car in front of you. Seriously, it won't get you to your destination any faster, it guzzles gas, and god forbid you misjudge the space between the cars. Not to mention, it pisses other drivers off and next thing you know you have a freaking caravan of twitchy, pissy, assholes who are treating the freeway like it is their own person bumper car ride. I like my car too much to deal with these kinds of assholes.
*shakes head*
I really don't understand the whole issue people have with driving. People are all trying to get home in one piece. If there was less lack of attention, lack of courtesy, and overabundance of douche baggery, perhaps there would be less people hitting the brakes and therefore less people slowing down to a ridiculous amount.
There is a further litany of stuff people do that piss me off, but I have been writing for almost 2 hours and now that I have gone through this process I am all good with the world again.
1. Newling, Dan. “'Phantom' traffic jams that cause misery for motorists can be caused by just ONE driver.” 3 Apr. 2010: Daily Mail. www.dailymail.co.uk.
2. Flynn, Morris R.; Kasimov, Aslan R.; Nave, Jean-Christophe; Rosales, Rodolfo Ruben; Seibold, Benjamin. "Traffic Modeling - Phantom Traffic Jams and Traveling Jamitons". MIT Mathmatics. http://math.mit.edu/projects/traffic/.
3. Murphy, Brian. "Traffic jams follow explosive pattern, says researcher". 5 Jun. 2009. Physorg.com. http://www.physorg.com/news163417792.html
