> And, for sure, sometimes the lane next to you is actually moving faster. But the point is that these cases are happening far less often than you think, and they largely fall outside our powers of detection.<p>Maybe I am falling into the illusion they speak of, but I am very suspicious of their claims, especially because of the quoted point above.<p>I realize that anecdotes aren't data, but I makes me think of two things I've noticed...<p>1) I have a family member with anxiety problems who has trouble just getting into traffic. She hates changing lanes because she perceives it as extra stressful, so she just stays put, content to follow the car ahead of her. While she always eventually reaches her destination, there are times when I've beaten her to a location by 10 minutes or more, all because I'm willing to change lanes.<p>2) When I am in traffic, I look at the car ahead (of course) as well as the farthest cars I'm able to see without obstruction. When I see the lane 'breaking up' several cars ahead and my own lane staying still, I tend to change lanes to take advantage of the temporary speed advantage I'll have. I can't count the times this has worked very well. The main reason is that people tend to get lazy in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and when cars start flowing there is inevitably one who is looking at his phone or just slow to react. By timing it so that I can overtake these slow-goers, I tend to make quite a bit of progress.<p>Maybe this study is focusing on people who only change lanes in response to the movement in their immediate vicinity and not up ahead? Either way, it seems like a shortsighted conclusion.
I doubt this has much to do with traffic. It can be explained by another observation: on average you spend more time in slow lanes.<p>The checkout at a supermarket has the same phenomenon. Let's say with 50% probability you choose a line that takes 10 minutes and with 50% probability you choose a line that takes 20 minutes. On average now 67% of the time the other line will move faster.
In California the lane to my left should be moving faster than the lane to my right. Big rigs tend to stay in the right-side "slow" lanes and typically aren't driving the 70-75mph everyone else is (although the speed limit is supposed to be 65mph)<p>People in the far left lane or carpool lanes are sometimes going 80mph~<p>Small side note:<p>When I think highway, I think a 2 lane stretch of road without any stop signs or traffic lights. The simulation makes it sound like they're talking about a freeway.
It strikes me that this is a good explanation for "imposter syndrome". Let's say you are a Dev Lead looking to understand your team relative to others and you mentally measure "solid new features". Each team that releases a solid new feature seems like a slip - and there will be a lot of those, but your release (skip) will barely pass notice in your mind
Anecdata coming, so keep in mind that this is 100% scientifically verifiable fact:<p>I find that this behavior is more typically the case when there is congestion due to the number of lanes expectedly decreasing.<p>In the case where the number of lanes decreases unexpectedly (e.g. due to an accident), the unobstructed lane seems to be slightly faster on average.<p>When the congestion is due to heavy merge/exit traffic, then I tend to find the traffic moves more quickly as you move away from the merge/exit lane.<p>I always spot against other cars in my vicinity to see which lane is moving more quickly.<p>I certainly do see the behavior illustrated in the article, but I don't know that it's the dominant traffic behavior.
Although I didn't look really carefully, it looks like the data only took a single lane change into account.<p>What about weaving into the lane that seems faster, passing several cars, then switching back? It seems like the snaking effect would work to your advantage if you always get in the lane where there is more distance between cars. Then again, maybe it's perception.
Unless they took a very large sample this might not be entirely true. Or put differently the lane next to yours over a long time frame isn't moving faster, but it does move faster at various points. By switching to the lane that is moving faster at that moment, you can move faster than your original does over the average.
They give a reason why people might think they go faster, but don't prove that they don't go faster.<p>See <a href="http://www.anthropic-principle.com/preprints/lane/cars.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.anthropic-principle.com/preprints/lane/cars.html</a>