Civil Obedience
Posted on March 1st, 2006 by Kevin Burtt (The Baron)
An amusing video here (warning: some profanity) from a group of college students in Georgia who decided to drive exactly the speed limit on the freeway (taking up all four lanes) and film what happened for a small project.
(UPDATE: M* did not accept the direct link to the video–current link goes to a blog discussion which contains the direct link…)
“Breaking the law” through speeding comes up frequently in LDS morality discussions about responsibilities in obeying the laws of the land–and this video isolates the ‘letter vs. spirit’ debate quite nicely:
(1) speed limits are there to promote safety
but…
(2) driving the speed limit while everyone else is 15-20 mph over is most certainly not very safe.
So, amateur moral philosophers: how fast do you drive your car, then, if safety is your biggest concern?
But, before we automatically justify the actions of all the guys who motor up I-15 at 85 mph every day, we should probably ask: why is driving exactly the speed limit in today’s society inherently dangerous? It’s not because you are driving 55 (or 65) but because everyone else is already breaking the law.
We might apply John-Nash-style game theory here (the “Beautiful Mind” version, not the actual version…): if everyone was acting in the best interest of the group everyone would be better off. Once you have a significant number of people who are not acting in everyone’s best interest, oftentimes the best choice (from a personal AND a group standpoint) becomes joining them rather than stubbornly doing what should be best for the group. Yet by doing so, the group as a whole becomes less safe than if everyone actually obeyed the speed limit.
(Another example of game theory in traffic, just for fun: why do you see situations where traffic gets backed up in all lanes of a four-lane highway when one lane becomes shut down temporarily because of construction? Because while most people get into the good three lanes as soon as possible, there are a few outliers who maximizes their personal travel time by jumping into that fourth lane (now empty) and cruise all the way down to where the lane ends and then wait for the rest of the cars to stop and let them in again. Easily justifiable because, after all, the other three lanes are stopped while driving in that lane allows you to move. Of course, if it weren’t for those people who use that fourth lane and come back, traffic in the other lanes wouldn’t be stopped…)
Of course, the idea that any one group anywhere is actually going to make decisions that benefit the entire group instead of maximizing their personal gain is pretty laughable. That’s why game theory makes for an interesting discussion of what people should be doing, but not useful for making personal decisions…at least in terms of driving. That’s why (a la Sammy Hagar) no one drives 55, except as a stunt. And why discussions of going over the speed limit in terms of personal righteousness tend to be meaningless…
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31 Responses to “Civil Obedience”
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Great find. My speed on the freeway — like everyone else’s, I suppose — is determined by marginal utility. I increase my speed until the perceived risks of further increase (fines, injury to myself and others, spousal complaints) outweigh the benefits (less time in the car). This usually gets me up to about 18 mph over the speed limit.
You know, an interesting thought occurred to me while watching the video (particularly the shot from the bridge with hundreds of cars following the four obedient ones). If speed limits are all about safety, why don’t the police do this? Four (or whatever the number of lanes) police cars driving side-by-side at the speed limit could effectively slow thousands of cars to the legal speed, or close to it. I doubt four police cars watching from the side of the road, or patrolling, for speeders, are anywhere near that efficient.
I wonder why the police might prefer to stop people after they’ve committed the crime. It’s a mystery to me.
Well, that part of the question is easy to answer: $$$$$$$$
Thanks a lot; I was trying to be subtle.
Technically, traffic engineers expect all four lanes to be used until the traffic narrow point, where zipper-like, cars alternate into the merged lane. (A recent story in our local paper brought this fact to my attention, they talked to the state DOT for the facts.) If people would do this, there wouldn’t be a terrible bottleneck as you describe.
The real problem arises when people merge too soon, leaving a long empty lane that encourages people to hop out of the lane they are in and get back in it again.
So my personal resolution is to always obey the rule and remain in the closing lane until the end.
Whoops…sorry!
Interesting…so it is, in fact, people guessing incorrectly what the best decision for the group is that leads to the unoptimal result. Is a smooth ‘zipper’ effect really possible, though? If I’m in the merged lane and I think the best decision was to get there early and accept a period of slow movement, and then some hotshot cuts into the empty lane and cruises up a ways before expecting someone to be nice and let him back in–darn right, I’m not going to be feeling too charitable to a person who (in my view) took the selfish way out and expects to be rewarded for it.
And, of course, human nature being what it is, that empty lane is too much of a temptation–like someone walking down dark alleys with $20 bills hanging out of their pockets…
Very interesting video. On freeways, I tend to go with the flow in the middle lane. It’s always above the speed limit (in Utah, anyway; other states vary - Maryland, for example, seems to have drivers that go the speed limit in all lanes), but driving the speed limit is just dangerous. I really don’t give it a second thought. In neighborhoods I drive the speed limit if I know what it is (if I don’t know what it is, I go with the flow if there are other cars, or go fairly slow if there aren’t other cars). Weather dependent, on long, straight roads in the middle of nowhere (i.e., where I live), I generally go 10 to 20 mph above the speed limit (which is 65 mph) during daylight hours, and about 10 mph under the speed limit when it’s dark (cows are often in the road - I’m terrified of the cows).
And I have no moral pings in my brain telling me that any of that is wrong.
Another example of game theory in traffic, just for fun: why do you see situations where traffic gets backed up in all lanes of a four-lane highway when one lane becomes shut down temporarily because of construction?
This is only an interesting game theory problem because people do not have full infomation about payoffs. But, as Liz O. points out, the information is available and if everybody had it, the game would have an unambiguous solution. (Around here, it is very irritating to hear people pontificating on the immorality of people who refuse to vacate the closing lane early).
Interesting experiment. I am grateful to live in a place where I don’t have to deal with many traffic problems on the way to and from work. When I get stuck in traffic in Salt Lake, I try to leave a gap in front of my car to allow someone to merge in front of me. I learned to do that from a website that contains a fun theory about how traffic moves and how we can affect it. When I’m stuck in a thick traffic jam (like driving south past Lehi at 5PM) I wish that everyone else on the road had read that website too.
As to the speed limit issue, I’m told that the speed limits are not always set based on safety for motorists but instead are set low to reduce gasoline consumption. I don’t know if that is true, but it seems like a reasonable goal in setting speed limits.
If I remmber correctly, the national speed limit in the olden days was 65. It was then reduced to 55 to help combat the gas shortage in the 70’s. Finally, area by area has been reinstating the 65 or 70 mph limits, depending on the state. Some states kept it at 55. I’m probably totally wrong about this though. I’m sure someone will correct me. Great video though.
Most roads have a “natural speed limit”. This speed limit is determined by the engineering of the road and traffic density. How steep the curves are, how much banking is built into the curves, the width of the lanes, and the quality of the road maintenence, among other factors. This determines how fast most motorists feel safe at driving on the roads. I-15 in Salt Lake County(except for the south bound lanes past draper/sandy) “feels” like an 85 MPH road. I don’t drive that fast on the road because quite frankly I’m afraid of getting a ticket, but 85 MPH really is pretty safe.
I remember the gloom and doom from public safety officers when the speed limits were raised across the U.S. And I haven’t seen the piles of bodies they warned against. I would personally like to see us determine the safe speed of the roads by applying an engineering analysis of the road and putting the true safe speed on the road.
“if everyone was acting in the best interest of the group everyone would be better off. Once you have a significant number of people who are not acting in everyone’s best interest, oftentimes the best choice (from a personal AND a group standpoint) becomes joining them rather than stubbornly doing what should be best for the group. Yet by doing so, the group as a whole becomes less safe than if everyone actually obeyed the speed limit.”
Why should the groups’ “best choice” be defined as safety? Perhaps the best choice for the group is getting there quickly? This is somewhat like the free market - too much regulation and/or taxes and trade goes underground. Too much restriction (as defined by the group) and the ‘law’ is broken.
P.S. For the 3 free lanes (with the 4th soon to be closed) I occasionally get into the forth lane and SLOW DOWN - matching the slow or stopped other 3 lanes.
Okay…I’m thinking about it and I still can’t get my mind around merging late being the most optimal solution. If you let everyone know 1-2 miles ahead of time that the lane is closed, and everyone merges early, you have a much better chance of merging while still at freeway speeds. By the time you reach the lane closure, everyone has already moved into the other three lanes and (ideally) everyone is still moving at a somewhat brisk pace. The later you merge, the harder is will be to merge smoothly (without one car having to actually stop and let a car in…) and I don’t see how a late merge dynamic can avoid major traffic slowdown. Perhaps the theory is there is NO way to avoid traffic slowdown regardless of what people do, even though from a purely theoretical standpoint an 100% ideal early merge where one lane is empty and ignored for a mile before shutdown should result in little-to-no traffic slowdown.
As a mental exercise, it still doesn’t make sense–it’s no wonder very few drivers don’t understand it…
The movie reminds me of a story my little brother tells. Once after an aggravating loss in the Utah high school basketball tournament at the Special Events Center at the U (before the Huntsman family bought it), he and some friends decided to take out their frustrations on the drivers on I-80/I-15. So they lined up three abreast across the freeway and drove several miles through SLC at rush hour at about 40 mph. Ah, the friendly waves, the encouraging language they heard from the folks behind them. It was amusing–but I suspect that their lives were in danger from the lunatics behind them.
Re: meems comment. Most freeways in the west had 70 mph speed limits before the 1973 Arab oil embargo, when the feds said, lower that to 55 mph or we’ll cut your share of federal gas taxes. Montana, the land of the free, simply said to drive at a “reasonable and prudent speed”. I-90 between Butte and Billings and eastward was a great place to drive real fast!
Now speed limits are back up, to 75 in many rural freeways in the west–but I don’t remember seeing anything that high in the northeast.
Bradley Ross’s comment about I-15 at 5:00 in Lehi reminds me of the week I spent in Utah last month. How much more can those morons californicate Utah??? Do they really think that building one more lane of freeway will solve the mess they’re making of the Wasatch front? The speed limits won’t matter, because none of those people in their one-passenger cars will be driving over 10 mph, burning non-replaceable fuel, befouling the air, each person taking up a space 15 feet wide and 60 feet long just to move his sorry carcase from a McMansion in Lindon to some job in SLC and back. One day someone will wake up to the mess, but in some respects it’s already too late.
#14 - great story Mark! There are some freeways int he NE that are now 70 on some parts but not the entire thing.
Speed limits in theory serve a purpose, but in the end they are useless unless you have state troopers consistently at specified intervals and not only on blitz-weekends of the month! The entire thing is a cash grab because if they catch you, you have already lived through the terror of putting your life in danger by speeding and therefore how is it dangerous at that point, and yet you still have to pay because you were wreckless in your driving out in the middle of nowhere with nobody around except for that trooper parked in the same “middle of nowhere” because “nowhere” was closer than the local “donut diner” and not because he is getting paid to be in the middle of nowhere!!
Bitter?
In texas they are now passing a law that will fine you for speeding for three years. In other words, you get pulled over you will have to pay 250 bucks a year for the next three years or something like that. Insanity.
Why should I be bitter, Roy?
Nobody in the State of Utah appears to have any brains, or if they have brains, they’ve got no cojones.
Anybody who has opened one book on urban development in the last 50 years knows that building another freeway, or adding a lane or two to an existing freeway, never solves urban transportation problems. The freeways simply fill up until they reach the level of congestion that people are willing to put up with.
But, the bozos out in Utah don’t seem to know this. They keep building more housing that can’t be reached from anywhere except by automobile. And then they build more strip malls and shopping malls surrounded by acres of beautiful black asphalt so people can get into their cars and drive from their house to the mall to the grocers to the dry cleaners to their work and play and church. And then they wonder why the roads are jammed and why the people are all fat and everybody’s getting diabetes and the cities are ugly and unliveable.
It’s like The Fly Went By. We need some little kid to figure out why it’s all going to hell in a handbasket and then yell “STOP!”
Of course, he won’t have to stop people from speeding, because the roads will all be crowded with cars (each with just one passenger) crawling along at 10 miles per hour.
I was referring to Anonymoose, actually.
not bitter at all, they just waste so much time on less than important things such as speeding when there are bigger social problems requiring attention! Example, guy allegedly beats spouse and they won’t respond because it is a “domestic dispute”, but crack 10mph over the speed limit, and you’re out your grocery money for the next week, just ridiculous!
Tanya, where did you live in Maryland? I see people driving 75 everyday on the 55 mph beltway (I-495), I-270 and I-95.
I am considering running for the US Congress, 8th district of Maryland. My platform is raise all speed limits by at least 5 miles per hour (school zones standard 25 mph). I would work to make speed limits more reasonable. When we moved here I could not believe there were freeways with a 35 mph speed limit. There are roads with 5 lanes and a 35 mph speed limit that rarely ever have people near them. These aren’t areas with heavy or even medium foot traffic that might justify a lower speed limit. And there are tunnels in DC with a 15 mph speed limit that should be 45 at least.
About two weeks ago, the freeway that circles Columbus, Ohio, (I-270) had a lot of deputy and patrol cars on it. As in, my commute on I-270 is about 11 miles long, and I counted over 30 cars (I stopped counting at 30.) They were all parked on the sides of the road, in groups of 2, 3, 4, or 5. Just sitting there. Dozens and dozens and dozens of cars; I suspect they used the guys from the police academy, or something. It was quite spooky; the entire freeway (speed limit 65, except in construction areas) was going about 40 mph the whole time I was driving along it. All the drivers who moved off onto I-71 with me continued to drive slowly, far below the average speed of the drivers we were merging with, until I got off the freeway altogether. Six hours later, everyone was still well below the speed limit on I-270, though they were back up to normal (usually 70-75 mph) on I-71 and I-70. That was at the end of the week; by the next Monday everything was back to normal. But it was a highly effective technique (assuming that they intended to make the freeway slow down) and they didn’t block anyone. The cars were just sitting there, watching (I didn’t see anyone get pulled over, but that may have been because everyone was being so cautious, and not because there was a policy in effect.)
Ironically, I’m passed more often (including on county roads, where passing is illegal and actually rather dangerous) by police cars than anything else. Then they take off, going about 55 in a 35 mph zone. I’m under the impression they find girls who are scared of speeding… really annoying. At least, to be behind.
I couldn’t access the video, but the problem in me.
Heli, if you raise the speed limit, everybody will go at least five miles over that. Pretty soon, we’ll all be rocketing along getting killed.
This idea these kids had is an interesting (although, dangerous to them, if I were their mother, I’d have slapped them) one. My aging aunt visited me when Sarah graduated high school. She scared me to death.
I had to lead her places and she would enter the freeway going 50 miles an hour (the speed limit here is 75). I tried to go that slow, but finally my survival instincts took over and I left her behind.
Heli, if you raise the speed limit, everybody will go at least five miles over that.
That may be true because they already drive that fast now, but I think you overestimate the effect of speed limits on driving behavior. If there were no speed limits on freeways, I’d do about 85-90 on them, but no faster. I suspect most people weigh speed against safety in about the same proportions.
What are you doing up in the middle of the night?
I have insomnia. I will be no good tomorrow.
And I’m so tired I can’t figure out what you’re saying mathematically. But if the speed limit is 50 and people are going 60-65, and they raise the speed limit to 60, people would go 65-70.
The speed limit here is 75 and I routinely find myself up about 90. I think a lot of people, especially young people, would try to push that 100 mile envelope just to do it. Course, I live in Utah. Home of the craziest drivers outside of Las Vegas.
I tend to go no more than ten over, and sometimes I even go under if that’s where I’m comfortable. That in part is because of all the tickets I accumulated in younger days, including one where I went through the entire town of Mount Pleasant, Utah on US 89 in about two minutes. Yes, on some freeways people go flying by even when I go fifteen over. (Especially I-95 in Delaware and Maryland, where the speed limit is no more than 65, and is 55 in long stretches.)
I attempted to major in civil engineering when I was in college. Apparently, the higher the speed limit the more it will be respected. Yes, there will be some people who will go that much faster, but there will also be more people who will go no faster than the limit (or no more than ten over). The key is to find the optimum speed limit for a particular road. The flow of traffic will still be more than that, but not much more. (Think about it - when NMSL mandated 55 did _anyone_ respect it?)
Something I noticed as my grandparents got older (and drove slower) that they used freeways less and less. I know my wife hates to drive I-95 here, where the limit is 55 and the flow is at least 75. If she has to use it she’ll go 60-65 in the right lane. I use I-95 every week (driving home from the stake center for my calling) and I go about 70 in the right lane. I get passed quite a bit.
Heli, I’ve never lived in Maryland (though I really would like to and am seeking jobs in that area), but I go there sometimes on business trips because our higher headquarters are there. I drive I-95 between Baltimore and Aberdeen when I’m out there. In order to go with the flow of traffic, I definitely have to drive slower than when I’m on a freeway in Utah. It just surprised me the first time.
Having just read what JWT wrote (#26), apparently my experience on I-95 is unique. Maybe I’ve been there when there were a lot of cops around or something, so people slowed down?
Could be. Back when the limit was 55 (and there was mandatory token enforcement, you’d occasionally see clusters of cars led by state troopers going about 58. (No one dared pass a trooper.)
Now the speed limit is 65 from Whitemarsh to the Delaware line, and traffic goes around 80, unless it’s too congested, there’s construction, or enforcement is stepped up. (I love how they always put patrol cars where we can see them.) There are always a few lunatics out there who like to go 85 or 90 and weave around everyone else.
Tanya, speed is affected by time of day and even day of the week. I-270 and I-95 I’m sure average 75 when its possible, before rush hour and right after (the two times I try and drive in). The part that is sooo annoying is that its a 55 mph zone and a ticket would really hurt (over 20 is bad). In Utah the speed limits are 65 and people also drive 75, so only 10 over. Course on long stretches I would drive as fast as my car and road conditions would allow if there was no limit. Germans drive on the autobahn 140 mph in some of the stretches and accidents are very rare. Course they’re driving porshe’s with brakes that can stop in 140 feet.
My point is that the speed limits on most of the roads I see in the DC metropolitan area are poorly planned, not well maintained, and have often ridiculously low speed limits. While drivers subsidize the metro the drivers suffer. Paying $18 a day for parking and subsidizing the metro with gas tax. Really its all about time. I want my gas taxes used to improve the roads so there is less congestion. The really need to make the beltway a double decker. The idea that you shouldn’t build more roads because more people will drive ignores the fact that the road already doesn’t serve the purpose and we create so much more pollution when cars are sitting on the freeway compared to driving along at 80 mph.
At 80 mph in the straigh parts I can get to work in 30 min. In rushhour traffic it takes 1:10 to 2 hours (usually 1:20).
Oh and something I think is very important to mention in relation to traffic is the wonderful concept of slugging.
In Northern Virginia a practice called slugging started when the HOV was implemented and drivers went by bus stops and asked people if they wanted a free ride to Washington, DC so they could use the HOV lanes (HOV-High Occupancy Vehicle). The HOV lanes required at least 3 people in the car and picking up a couple riders would allow me to get to DC in 40 minutes instead of taking 2 hours in the regular lanes. This program enjoys such a cooperative spirit and a sense of comraderie that I was extremely impressed. The program has been working for over 12 years and there are no known incidents of any serious problems. No kidnappings (that we know of, hehe).
I participated as a driver and a rider and enjoyed meeting people of all backgrounds. I rode with the helicopter pilot for the Whitehouse (Bush, Clinton, and Bush), with lawyers, lobbiests, IT professionals, secretaries, and even news reporters. What an excellent experience, there was an added sense of solidarity as we collectively worked against the commute together.