Here's the brutal truth about traffic: the person causing it is staring back at you in the mirror.
Social psychology research indicates that drivers often view other vehicles as competitors rather than collaborators in a shared transportation system
, and this adversarial mindset creates the very congestion we all despise. The mathematics of traffic flow have exposed our deepest flaws as cooperative beings, turning every commute into a real-time experiment in why humans can't have nice things.
1. Stop Tailgating Like Your Life Depends On It (Because It Does)
Human drivers can help reduce phantom traffic jams simply by not following other cars so closely. "There's no advantage of riding up a tailpipe"
, says MIT researcher Berthold Horn. The science is unforgiving here:
phantom jams begin when a car in dense traffic slows down even slightly, which causes the car behind that vehicle to slow even more — and the slowing action spreads backward through the lane of traffic like a wave, getting worse the farther it spreads. Eventually, the cars far behind are forced to stop completely
.
Your tailgating isn't making you faster; it's making everyone slower.
Tailgating is a major contributing factor to traffic jams, as drivers without enough room to simply slow down when the vehicle in front of them decelerates are forced to come to a stop, thus setting off a chain reaction
. The phantom jam born from your impatience will ripple backwards for miles, creating the very delay you were trying to avoid. It's like being angry at gravity while jumping off a cliff.
2. Master the Zipper Merge (Even Though It Feels Wrong)
Every traffic engineer knows this, but most drivers refuse to believe it:
zipper merging allows drivers to use both lanes of a road right up to the point of lane closure where they take turns merging into the open lane. The name comes from the resemblance of the alternating merge to the "teeth" of a zipper
. Research shows
the length of backups is reduced 40-50 percent
when done properly.
Yet we've culturally decided that late merging is "cheating" — a collective delusion that costs us all time.
At one zipper merge site in Michigan, the congestion area was reduced from 6 miles to 3 miles and the time spent in traffic was decreased dramatically, saving drivers an average of 15 to 25 minutes
. But implementing it requires the one thing traffic psychology tells us humans struggle with most: cooperation over competition.
3. Get Out of the Left Lane (You're Not the Highway Police)
Irresponsible drivers encompass five distinct subtypes characterized by aggressive or non-compliant behavior: selfish drivers who prioritize personal gain, dangerous drivers who take excessive risks, left-lane campers who obstruct faster traffic, slowpokes who impede flow
. Left-lane camping might feel righteous — you're following the speed limit, after all — but
when someone camps in the left lane going slower than traffic flow, it forces other drivers to make riskier moves. They pass on the right, make tight lane changes, tailgate, or brake suddenly
.
The psychology here is fascinating: left-lane campers often believe they're enforcing safety, but they're actually creating chaos.
Slowpoke drivers cause unnecessary lane changing as faster traffic weaves around to pass on the right
. You become the stone in the stream, forcing the water to find more turbulent paths around you.
4. Stop Changing Lanes Like a Pinball
The butterfly effect traffic jam occurs when a seemingly small disturbance in the normal flow of traffic, such as a vehicle changing lanes, results in a sequence of events that causes everyone to slow down. As a vehicle is preparing to change lanes, they decelerate, thus causing a backup in their current lane
. Each lane change creates a ripple effect across multiple lanes as drivers react and counter-react.
Frequent lane changes are a practice that produces virtually nothing and can even cause traffic jams
. The cruel irony is that aggressive lane-changers, desperate to save seconds, often create minutes of delay for hundreds of other drivers. It's the tragedy of the commons played out at 70 mph.
5. Drive Like You Actually Understand Physics
Ants do not have any traffic jams, tailgating or road rage. The secret to their success is cooperation. Ants simply try to do what is best for the entire colony
. Meanwhile, humans drive with the spatial awareness of drunk toddlers and the cooperative instincts of honey badgers.
Research suggests that if drivers maintain an equal distance from the cars in front of and behind them—a method called 'bilateral control'—it could reduce traffic jams. This approach could not only lessen drivers' risk of traffic violations and congestion but also potentially double travel speed
. The solution isn't more lanes or smarter algorithms — it's acknowledging that traffic flow is a collective physics problem where your individual choices cascade through the system like dominoes.
The fundamental issue isn't infrastructure or technology; it's that
stress, time pressure, and emotional states can influence driving decisions, sometimes resulting in suboptimal choices that lead to traffic jams
. We've built a transportation system that requires cooperation from creatures who evolved to compete for resources, then act surprised when the result is chaos.
Transportation scientists estimate that traffic time could improve ~25% if people took turns merging and behaved better
. The technology to eliminate traffic jams already exists — it's called not being a selfish driver. Unfortunately, that might be the hardest problem to solve.
- JB
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Julian Blok
Contrarians are not born. They are assembled — slowly, accidentally, and usually at someone else's expense. A stint in European banking teaches you that confidence and correctness are not the same thing. Extensive travel teaches you that the obvious answer is mostly just the local one. A decade supplying hospitality businesses teaches you that the industry's most repeated problems are not bad luck — they are bad defaults, faithfully maintained.
Julian Blok consults on behavioural insight and systems-led change for hospitality and business operators. The Contrarian is what happens when someone who has spent too long watching the same mistakes recur decides, rather belatedly, to say something about it.
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