Personal Adulting: Life In the Fast Lane

You were going to make it to happy hour. You could practically taste the half-priced curly fries – is it the sauce or the savings that make them so perfect? Your friends kept texting you to ask for an ETA, but as the minutes ticked on even they lost hope. You were speeding like Mario Andretti but are met with yet another red light. The left lane was faring slightly better, but you needed to turn right soon so you stayed straight and true. You receive a last “Well just let us know when you’re in the area,” but you know when you arrive everything will be winding down. You send a quick “RIP” in the chat and decide to change lanes and go home. The traffic had won this round. As you pull ahead you see the hold-up. Not a wreck, or flash mob dance in the road as you speculated, but a thirty-some with a mile of empty road ahead of them going 30mph…a “Nancy”. One of the most devastating driver types. They must have thick skin or be partially deaf to not hear the cacophony of car horns and creative swears from people attempting to switch lanes and pass. You get home, have some depressing celery instead, but think, “What if? What if I had changed lanes? I was speeding, but it didn’t really help? Should I have taken the long way around at this time of day? What if I had read that Adulting article?!” What if indeed.

If you ever find yourself getting passed by the tow truck you just blew by a few minutes ago, or always feel like you’re stuck in the wrong lane, we have a few tips and tricks to make you more efficient and confident. A quick bio on whom to be behind and whom to avoid is below:

Driver Types

Nancy – The type of person that your grandma would ridicule during one of your sports tournaments for faking an injury. Not a matter of gender, but effort. They don’t drive for fun, but out of necessity. You can see people honking and swerving out of their lane 30 cars behind. Avoid like the plague, or pandemic, I guess.

Fancy Nancy – Someone with an expensive car which you would assume correlates to a better driver, but they are a Nancy in disguise. Typically a Tesla, Lexus, Corvette, or Cadillac. Avoid.

Sunday Driver – Their car costs more than your house, but they never seem to get above 30mph. They could blow by everyone in a second’s notice but are enjoying their commute without a care in the world. Get out of their lane but give them a nod as you drive by - who knows? Maybe they will start throwing $100 bills out of their convertible.

Weaver – Texting, calling, drunk, looking at some beautiful person walking by, or just incompetent. These people are pure danger with a face. Forget about getting somewhere fast, just avoid them and live to fight another day.

Out of State Plate – Avoid out-of-staters. Tourists where their main objective is to get lost. Look out for the positive out-of-staters like a Nevada, Texas, or Washington license plate which are probably great drivers and smarter people for avoiding income taxes.

Parents w/ Kids – They are running on a few hours of sleep and just want the yelling in the back to stop. They need to get from Point A to B as quickly as possible. Identified by an SUV or mini-van without some Russian-doll family sticker. They’re aware their kids exist but don’t need the rest of the world to know. Follow.

Delivery Vehicle – These drivers have a deadline and need to get 1,000 packages out in 1 hour. They are not wasting anyone’s time and have spent billions on logistics technology to get them to the destination faster than you. Follow

Pick-Up Truck – Best to be behind while sitting at a stop light. Fastest off the line (0-30mph) but lose steam quickly. Afraid of roll-over risk around corners. Follow, but pass.

Sedan Sports Models – The fastest of the fast. They paid $1000 more for a sticker telling them they’re better than the average person and will therefore put every extra horsepower to work. Follow if you can keep up.

Dale Earnhardts – The best driver out there. Somehow wherever they go traffic seems to move aside. Identified by their confidence in lane choice and lane changes. They don’t dart back and forth, but instead calculate where they going and how they can look cool doing it. Aspire to be this person.

Lane Scenario Analysis

The lane you choose is like the date you picked for your high school dance, college grab-a-date, or corporate Christmas party dinner. If you are familiar with one another it could be a Top 10 night. If you are unsure of what they’re like outside of school or work, you could be stuck with them all night. Know which lane you need to be in and stick to it.

Two Car Theory – This theory (pending law) states that you should always change lanes if there is at least a 2 car differential and at least one light between you and your next turn. If you are the first car at the light, you can time the light correctly and get ahead of the cars in the other lanes. Make a lane change after establishing a wide berth between yourself and the cars in the other lane. This is effective as the time difference for two extra cars going through traffic is more than the time and effort it would take to change lanes. Often you make up a least a one car position. If the car next to you speeds to meet you, you are in a fine position to get where you need to go regardless as everyone is moving at a reasonable pace.

Slow is the New Fast – On the freeway, the left lane is the passing lane where drivers typically commute at a faster speed. Trucks cannot be in these far left lanes which in theory would also make them quicker. The reality, the faster lane is that between the passing lane and the merging lane (farthest right). This is because cops are more likely to patrol the passing lanes looking for people speeding. Overall, lanes typically move at a similar speed over a long-trip, so if you are in bumper to bumper traffic, stay within the lane you are in. Changing lanes in traffic simply acts to increase the amount of confusion and slows traffic even further.

Street Parking – Stay away from the lane with street parking as people may be poorly parallel parking or timing traffic to pull out of their spot. By being in the farther lane you can blow by these turds.

Cutoff Rule – When turning right, if the driver in front of you goes into the near lane, you should turn into the far lane and vice versa. This allows you to speed up and be equal with the person that was in front of you – a minimum one car gain.

Bad Boys Bad Boys

One of the most important factors to consider when trying to get from point A to B most efficiently as possible are the trends of the local cops. If you need to participate in aggressive driving techniques and are confident you can do this in a safe manner, there are certain times that you are more likely to be pulled over than others.

End of the Month – Police departments do not have quotas…on paper. Many state quotas were outlawed in the early 2000’s. But, to assume that they do not use tickets allocated or ‘perps’ apprehended as some measure of productivity would be illogical. Cops tend to give out more speeding or parking tickets around the end of a month.

Before a Holiday – Cops do not want to ruin someone’s holiday or get into an argument with Aunt May who was just trying to get the turkey to Thanksgiving before it got cold. They will typically try to increase surveillance two weeks ahead of major holidays to maintain a normal amount of tickets during those months.

Children Safety – Cops tend to hang around during the hours when children are going to, or getting out of, school as they do not want people speeding and putting young lives in potential danger. Hours of 7-9AM and 2-4PM are peak cop times. After 4PM you are less likely to be pulled over or ticketed as cops do not want to be the cause of traffic in rush hour.

Does Speeding Help?

We at Adulting would never encourage someone to break the law or put their lives in danger, but the reality is most people speed. Back in 1975 there was a temporary National Speed Limit at 55 mph, as you can imagine, there was a large spike in speeding. Today, due to lower volume of people of the roads, drivers are taking advantage of this and speeding at higher rates than ever before. Be safe out there, but if you are going to speed, does that help you get to your destination faster?

Stop Lights or Go Lights?

Stop lights are all synced on a grid designed for prime efficiency at a speed limit in the area. If you were to drive at that speed limit in between stops you may notice you are consistently facing another red light. This is because the light systems cannot account for the time for each car to get up to the speed limit, or the amount of traffic in an area. If you are at a dead stop with no cars in front of you, you should drive around 5-10mph over the speed limit to compensate for the lost time it took to get to the speed limit. It is also important not to go too far above the speed limit, otherwise you may get to the next circuit too quickly which has not turned green. As more data has become engineers have become increasingly more efficient and will hopefully have lights timed close-to-perfect in the next decade.

Stretch Your Neck

Look ahead of you to see whether lights up ahead are green, yellow, or red. If there is a red light, slow down well before the light to avoid a hard stop / going idle. Try to keep some forward motion and when the light switches to green, you are in a better position to reach the speed limit or above. Yellow lights are timed based on the speed limit of an era. If the speed limit is exceedingly high, and it turns yellow as you are close to the light, do not stop. Slamming on the breaks at this point would be dangerous. As Jeremy Clarkson once said, “Speed has never killed anyone…Suddenly becoming stationary is what kills you.” If you can see a light has just turned green, it is probably a good time to actually slow down to meet the speed limit per our previous point regarding stop limit timing and calculations. When at a stop light, look at the signals towards the cross-traffic as they may give you a tell as to when your light will turn green.

There are some situations in which there is nothing you can do to get to your destination faster. In adult life, the best driving technique you can learn is to calm down, realize you cannot always come out on top, and keep some frozen curly fries in your fridge so you never feel like you are missing out.