• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    Congestion is not caused by road rage

    But it is. If one person needs to slam on their brakes, that causes a ripple effect all the way down, which results in stop and go traffic. Road rage tends to cause people to slam on their brakes, thus road rage can cause congestion.

    slowing the flow of traffic behind you by failing to move

    That doesn’t really impact congestion though, unless it leads to something that causes people to slam on their brakes. Going 65 instead of 75 isn’t congestion.

    selfish

    Oh I absolutely agree that not moving over is selfish, which is why I always move over when the lane next to me is open. I also move over when traffic to my right is traveling about the same speed as me and there are cars behind me.

    But my point is that cars camping in the left-most lane are annoying, but they aren’t causing congestion themselves. Passing on the right absolutely can cause congestion because it is likely to cause someone else to slam on their brakes, which dominoes into stop and go traffic.

    • littleblue✨@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      My apologies, friend, but correlation is not causation. There are many reasons why stopping suddenly would cause a ripple effect, which is exacerbated by too short of a follow distance, among other things. “Road rage” is an informal term closer to an idiom than a quantifiable variable, furthermore. However, I believe I hear what you’re intending to convey.

      To your second point, that is fundamentally incorrect; just because it is not an abrupt change is no proof that it doesn’t affect the wider scope of traffic on said road. In fact, one could make an argument that ignoring this fact may be due to a perspective too focused on one’s own locality within said traffic instead of perceiving the conversation as a whole.

      I appreciate your candor and neighborly discourse, all the same. 🙇🏽‍♂️