When you are driving down the road these days, it’s a bit difficult to maintain enough cheer so as to not exit your car at the end of a drive with a bit of annoyance at all the crap drivers you have to put up with. Whether it’s the idiot who cut you off; the pedestrian who walked 20 feet in front of your car and made you slam on the brakes; or the cyclist who swerved through traffic and ran a red light, there’s a lot to be annoyed about.
Instead of rage, I have another suggestion, which hinges on the cooperation of all people involved. Drivers, pedestrians and cyclists: let’s all just show a bit of courtesy on the roads.
This is, in fact, a remarkably drastic proposal. We fight human tendencies and the social, cultural and historical elements responsible for the atmosphere we drive in; but we can do it.
I’ve previously written that some technical solution to some of the problems of these sorts on campus — specifically, I focused on the pedestrian crosswalks at the speed bumps on Dan Allen Drive. A system to regulate traffic — a traffic light — could reduce the number of pedestrians crossing Dan Allen without looking and would hopefully reduce the congestion on the street caused by large masses of pedestrians crossing, forcing cars to stop. However, with the budget in its current state, I sadly concede that such a solution is a low priority on the expense sheets.
Yet the fundamental argument is the same: there is an obvious disconnect between the laws of man, giving right-of-way to the pedestrian, and the laws of physics, which dictate by momentum — equal to mass times velocity — a 75 kg person walking at roughly 1.11 m/s (4 km/s or about 2.5 mph) has to apply less force to stop than a 1000 kg car moving 6.94 m/s (25 km/s or about 15 mph) would. The math gets worse when it’s a bus trying to stop on a dime.
Moreover, there are social phenomenon preventing us from fully appreciating the difficulty of returning courtesy to the roads. One major phenomenon is the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), which refers to a person’s tendency to incorrectly attribute certain behaviors to the personal qualities of another individual instead of the situational context. The classic on-campus example: a pedestrian darts in front of your car to cross the street, forcing you to slam on the brakes. You likely think this person is an idiot for not crossing or is one of those annoying people who gets lost in his or her personal iPod world, ignorant of the world around them. After you park, you then proceed to do exactly what that pedestrian did to you minutes before. However, you rationalize this decision as you are running late for class and needed to hurry across the street. See the inconsistency? That’s the FAE in action.
This problem isn’t something we can solve in one fell swoop — incremental progress is vital here. My suggestion is this: every time somebody does something stupid on the road, instead of getting annoyed and calling said individual an idiot or another similar term, take a second and just think about some of the “idiotic” stuff you’ve done while driving. And later, if said action involves something like another motorist cutting you off or not letting you in, or a pedestrian or cyclist dodging through traffic without regard for the laws of physics and their immense impact on motor vehicles (hence all the problems about cars in physics textbooks), take the high road the next time you step into a car or take a walk across campus. Let that person merge or turn onto the road you are driving on. Take a couple of seconds and look before you cross the street. Acknowledge that other drivers have places to be as well.
We can bring courtesy back to the roads — we just need to start making those little efforts.
