Scribem

Experiments while driving

Joyce has been quite busy with RICE stuff at the moment so don’t expect any posts from her any time soon. I’ve also been a bit busy with other stuff, but I thought I’ll post this just for amusement value…

On my daily commute driving to work, I inevitably end up having to squeeze myself from a small side-street (Cliff Rd) into a major road (Carlingford Rd) in congested peak hour traffic. Needless to say, the cars that are queued up on Carlingford Rd, and have right-of-way, couldn’t care less about cars that are trying to get out of a side-street. So, the only time cars can get out of Cliff onto Carlingford is when some nice obliging driver lets you into the traffic.

In an attempt to have more of a say in squeezing into traffic, I tried different “tactics” and noted the response of each one. What follows is a rough description of the quasi-experiment and its results and observations. Note: this is in no way scientifically rigorous, nor does it make a serious attempt to be – I was just bored sitting in peak hour traffic doing squat, so I amused myself with this…

Some things about the “experiment”:

• The metric used was simply the average number of cars on Carlingford Rd that went past before a car from Cliff Rd could get out.
• The observations were made over a period of roughly 3 months.

And here are the different things I (and others) tried along with some observations/results:

1. Do nothing
   This involved sitting there and not doing anything, just waiting for someone to let you into the traffic.This was by far the most common observed action amongst drivers (with the majority of female drivers adopting this tactic). Roughly 10–12 cars would pass before a car could get out.
2. Waving your hand about
   This usually involved winding down the window and sticking your arm out of the car to grab attention from other drivers.This tactic was used on a number of occasions and I guess the goal is to flag their attention so that they’ll let you pass. It seemed to work better for female drivers than male drivers. In this case, roughly 6–7 cars would pass before a car could get out.
3. Edge into intersection with eye contact
   This involved slowly creeping into the intersection making sure you look at the drivers of incoming cars.Males tended to use this tactic more that female drivers. It appears to have roughly the same success rate as waving your hand about (approx. 5–6).
4. Edge into intersection without eye contact
   This is the same as the previous tactic, but avoiding eye contact.Not many people seem to use this tactic, but it’s surprisingly effective. In fact, it is now what I do everyday now. Using this strategy, I’ve almost always got out of the intersection with only 1 or 2 cars passing. Success rate is even higher when I’m the second car in the queue and you try to tail the first car as it turns out. Of course, judgement is required to ensure safety.
5. Feign right-turn and turn left
   This involves signaling a right-hand turn and once you’re in the intersection, turn left instead.I’ve seen it done once by some punk driving a SUV. Firstly, he jumps the queue by passing all the cars trying to turn left and signals right. I guess people must feel sorry for drivers trying to turn right out of that intersection and so both lanes let him in. Once he was in the intersection he turned left, and annoyed a number of people in the process (myself included). Although he got out of the intersection quite efficiently, he was subsequently road-raged (by means of tailing) by the next guy out of the intersection for the next few kilometres.

Other observations:

• Traffic is significantly better during school holidays (pretty obvious).
• Cars are much more likely to give way when they’re faced with a red traffic light ahead of them (this one is fairly obvious).
• Cars are more likely to give way when the driver turning out is a female.
• Female drivers have a tendency to be oblivious to cars slowing down for them and they sit tight until the cars actually come to a stop.