A Little More Traffic
So in my last post I was talking over with God my theories about why the number two lane seems to make better time than the “fast” lane. Today God was pointing out to me that there’s a certain “confirmation bias,” not to mention selective memory, in my theory and explanation. She pointed out that I noticed when the number two lane moved faster because it seemed to go against conventional wisdom, but when the fast lane went faster, well that was expected, so not worth noting or remembering.
So I took some time to think more carefully about it and for once God was actually helpful; she did something to help me remember more completely and more vividly.
Of course, I only have her word that I was accurately remembering, but if you can’t take God’s word for things, well, you’d have to rely on your own intelligence and then where would most of us be?
But anyway, what I realized was that there’s a threshold. My theory seemed to hold true as long as there was little enough traffic that the lanes could move pretty much freely. So once the traffic gets heavy enough that you generally have to wait for an opening to change lanes, rather than just move up or back a little to get away from the car next to you, then all bets are off. When traffic gets that heavy, and in L.A. that’s a lot of the time, then you just have to evaluate how traffic is moving on a case by case basis.
And you’ll usually get it wrong. Or is that just confirmation bias again?
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