OK. Assuming that this isn't universal (although it probably is), I have an on-ramp I need to get onto the highway on my way to work. It's a ramp that is two lanes wide, goes up and doglegs to the right, and it narrows to one lane as it merges onto the highway. Just as it narrows from two to one, there are two columns of traffic signals, one for the left lane and one for the right. Stands to reason, during rush hour traffic, all the oncoming cars who want to get onto this highway have to get into these two lanes and stop at the light. When the light on the left column goes from red to green, the first car on the left lane at the traffic light can go. Then the traffic light on the right column turns green, indicating that the car on the right lane can now proceed through the lane and merge onto the highway ahead. And so on and so forth.
So, you can guess that as the cars get onto this ramp, they will separate in such a way that they will choose which lane to get onto according to the order they got onto the ramp. And you would think that you would alternate -- one car goes on the left, one goes on the right -- because the way you got onto the ramp should be in the same order as you go through the traffic light. Only fair.
Unfortunately, people are stupid. Sometimes when you do the alternating thing, you wind up not leaving in the same order you entered. I've been lucky that I've actually gone ahead of cars that I was behind when we got to the ramp, but just as often (if not moreso) I have fallen behind cars I was in front of. I hate that.
The reason that happens is because the cars in front of the pack I'm in, the ones that are already waiting at the light when we get there, were unable or indifferent to the common sense that if the car in front of you is going in one lane, you go in the other. Now, there are huge vehicles that might skew the length of the two waiting lanes off, and I can see that an inattentive driver would just automatically go to the lane that's shorter, not knowing (or caring) that it's the number of cars and not the length that matters and that in this case the longer lane might actually be shorter, but again, People Are Stupid. Semis can also throw things off. They have to take both lanes, so any cars coming up behind them have no idea how the alternating cars are going to go, so they have to take a guess, and they may end up falling behind the car that's tailing them. That's also happened to me before, and that sucks and stays with me to this day.
I might be making excuses for people, and I don't want to when I would rather point the finger. Anyhoo ... all of this incorrect calculating means that I fall behind other cars, and I hate that, so I have now gotten to doing quick counting of the cars waiting in front of me so I don't get screwed. That usually works, but if there are some friggin' long buses and stuff that obscure cars that are ahead or behind them, I could get it wrong. Well, I got it wrong this morning. There were a bunch of buses and small trucks waiting, and I did the "eeny-meeny-miney-moe" thing and I thought I picked the right one. Nope -- the bus on the lane I selected hid two cars that were ahead of it, so I fell behind the car that came up behind me. Sucks.
And the worse thing is is that I was following a car onto this ramp and decided to pull in behind it instead of take the other lane. I believe people just mindlessly go to the lane the car in front of it didn't take. If I just did that, I would've been find. But I regularly fight this presumption, and it burned me in the behind this morning, dang it.
I don't know why I'm still all hopped up about it. It's a Friday commute and I got to work in just over half an hour.
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