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The Judgement Zone

Welcome to the Judgement Zone. Are you judging me because I spelled judgment wrong? Then this is the perfect place for you! 

Racing to Red Lights

Screw coffee; the best way to wake up is by risking your life early in the morning! For those of us that drive to work, that’s what we do. I risk my life driving across the San Francisco Bay to Berkeley. The commute involves spanning a magnificent 3-mile bridge, hundreds of feet in the air, part of which collapsed during the 1989 earthquake, killing an unlikely citizen. The trade-off of the “reverse-commute”, which usually takes a half hour in the morning, is that the sun is in your eyes both ways. The journey home usually takes 45 minutes, as traffic congests on the western span of the bridge. The views of the City are incredible. The natural beauty of the fog changes every day. I can’t imagine a more beautiful place to be stuck in traffic.

I’m writing because I’ve noticed a daily phenomenon, which I can’t seem to get over, partly because nobody else ever talks about it: we’re all racing toward red lights!

For decades, two totally unrelated factoids have stuck in the crevices of my mind, I think because there is a universal truth to them both. The first is from Psychology 101 class at Cornell, which was famous for once being the largest lecture in the world. It was also known to us freshmen for having a fleet of good-looking female TA’s and more than a handful of sexual harassment charges against sleep psychology professor and hypnosis specialist James Maas, the man who coined the term “power napping” in the 1970’s. This was in 2005, well before the Me Too movement. It was my very first college class, so I actually remember a few things from it. The first thing we covered was a phenomenon called the “Fundamental Attribution Error”. Stuffed in the very last row of an auditorium filled with 750 eighteen-year-olds of our nation’s best and brightest, we learned that human beings are fundamentally flawed in that we’re programmed to basically think that we’re better than everyone else. We attribute other peoples’ mistakes to their personalities, but when we commit the same mistakes, write them off as situational. “That woman is so annoying talking on her cell phone! She has no respect for the rules or the other people on this bus!” Then, a week later, you’re talking on your cell phone on the bus. “I had to take that call! I haven’t spoken with Aunt Barbara in over a week! “

The scientific evidence used to highlight the Fundamental Attribution Error was beautiful in its simplicity. A survey was given to a bunch of folks, containing various unrelated questions. One of the questions was “Are you a better driver than the average driver?” Now, pause to consider this question and what it implies. What is your answer? Also consider: what percentage of responses of yeses and nos would we expect to answer this question IF people answered truly? Well, since we’re comparing ourselves to the average driver, meaning exactly equal between bad and good, in theory the responses should be 50% yes and 50% no. But guess what? 95% responded “yes”! This is the Fundamental Attribution Error at its finest. We rationalize and ignore our own mistakes but quickly judge others.

The other memory is even older. This took place at Temple Judea, my synagogue in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. I must have been around bar mitzvah age; it was well before I could drive. We were doing some sort of family community building exercise where we were asked a bunch of questions, wrote down our answers anonymously on pieces of paper, then the rabbi picked the papers out of a hat and we all discussed them publicly. This particular question was something like, “what annoys you most about people in the community?” As the rabbi drew the answers out of the hat, it became evident that over half of the responses, including my dad’s, were “bad drivers”! I didn’t understand why, or what this meant at the time, but it’s always stuck with me for some odd reason. And here I am writing about it over 20 years later!

What makes a bad driver a bad driver? There are so many ways. Not using ones turn signal is an obvious one. Turning into traffic. Driving too fast. Driving too slow. Not waiting one’s turn at an intersection or merge. Failure to merge in a smooth or sensible way. Double parking on busy streets. There are dozens of ways. Some of these are more excusable than others. Someone may be lost, and they must drive slowly in order to read the street signs and not miss their turn. Someone may be looking for parking. They may be old and their sensory perception isn’t very sharp. Nowadays, an incredible amount of people are on their phones. Whether they’re looking to the phone for directions, searching for a new podcast, texting their friends, or looking at Kim Kardashian’s ass, they’re not paying full attention to the road. This is not excusable at all in my opinion*, and it’s the main reason our car insurance rates have increased substantially over the last decade according to my insurance broker.

*Fundamental attribution error alert! I am occasionally guilty of it… although not as guilty as most, I’d like to think.

But when it comes to bad driving, the one thing that I can’t forgive is racing toward red lights. Why does it bother me so much? It’s bad for your gas mileage. It’s bad for your brakes. It’s bad for the flow of traffic. It creates unnecessary safety risk. The jerking nature of it is uncomfortable. And most of all, it’s stressful! Why would you be continually slamming your accelerator and brakes when you can coast smoothly?

The thing is that the folks racing to red lights are not lost. They’re not tourists. They are commuters, doing the same trip five days a week. For the mile-long stretch on either side of the panhandle, the lights are timed. You can cruise at 30 mph and hit each light with no stress. Instead, nearly everyone is racing toward the next red light! Then they brake. Three seconds pass and they accelerate heavily, racing to the next red light! They repeat this 15 times in a row! Cole, Clayton, Ashbury, Masonic, Central, Lyon, Baker, Broderick, Divisadero, Scott, Steiner, Fillmore. At this point, freeway congestion starts to build and I’ll take a right on Fillmore, then a left on Haight (what I consider to be a historic corner) and then take Haight to the freeway. For some reason I can’t really explain, since they closed off Page Street to cars, it’s a lot easier to get onto the freeway from Haight—often only one or two light cycles, when it used to take four or five. Shh, don’t tell anyone!

I’m completely dumbfounded that folks continue to do the same stupid thing every day, and even if they haven’t been told that the lights are timed, haven’t figured it out. Can’t they see that the light fifty feet ahead is red? Are they near-sighted? I’ll grant that about one in ten cars gets it, and I always am appreciative (or perhaps relieved) when one of those cars is behind or alongside me, rather than riding my ass or trying to pass me so that they too, can get to the red light first. By the time I get to the red light, it has turned green, and because I don’t have to slow down, I pass them right back – twelve times in a row! It’s the same on the Great Highway. It seems that for most people, the moment we get in our cars, the idea is to race everyone else on the road to get wherever you’re going the fastest. The goal is not to get to where you’re going safely; if you can get to your destination 30 seconds faster, risk your life (and the life of others) by punching that accelerator. But the thing that astounds me is that in most cases, they’re not getting anywhere faster! I see them doing the same old stupid routine every day, passing me and getting passed back over and over again, and when it’s finally time to get onto the freeway, we’re in the same exact positions where we started. In fact, many of the times I’m ahead of them, because they are not looking ahead to see what’s open and what’s blocked off by a garbage truck (excuse me, collection truck). I make the pass well in advance, having already identified it 10 seconds previous, while they only consider making the pass once they’re stuck in whatever situation it is. It’s like they’re constantly in this hyper-neurotic and nervous mindset, blind as a bat and dumb as a goldfish. I see people tailing each other on the PCH, a road connecting chill beach towns, and I picture them thinking, “HURRY UP SO THAT I CAN RELAX!!!” You can start by relaxing in your car, buddy.

As a side-note, it’s particularly dangerous to double-park on Oak and Fell. There’s a good mini-documentary called “Oak & Scott” about the safety (or lack thereof) of pedestrians and bicyclists around that intersection, which is where the first bike lane was installed in the City. I’m offended and perplexed when cars don’t pull into an opening or better yet, turn onto a side-street. Yes, you poor Uber users will now have to walk 30 feet before you get in a car with a driver who has no idea where they’re going.

I think it’s really sad and embarrassing that so few people get it. Then again, I think it’s about the same percentage of people who know how to walk correctly, whether on the sidewalk or in a crowded setting—almost nobody is paying attention. Almost everybody seems to be in a constant panic mode. It’s most evident in grocery stores, where some sort of food survival animal instinct kicks in and everyone is racing around as if the food were about to run out and their family will starve. But it’s really wherever you go; go to a concert, a sports game, or a crowded bar, pretty much nobody is looking out for other people. The concept of communicating to another person which way you’re going, verbally or non-verbally, doesn’t cross anyone’s mind. The concept of pausing for two seconds to let someone else pass is inconceivable. When an elevator door opens, nine out of ten people waiting to use it rush in rather than wait one more second to see if there’s anyone inside who wants to get out. Whenever I do bump into another “one in ten” person, who will grant me the right-of-way in the right spots, I will always acknowledge them with at least a head nod. In 50-50 spots where we each have the equal right of way, and they give me the signal, I will often let them know that I appreciate them with a “thank you”. I’ve even said a few times “you’re one in ten”. They often laugh because they know what’s up.

The best excuse for bad driving is that you’re in an unfamiliar place. To go to Berkeley from the Bay Bridge, the phone’s GPS direction is for you to merge left, so you try to merge, not waiting your turn, messing up traffic and creating a safety risk. Little do you understand that you have a mile until the merge happens, and as a matter of fact, all three left lanes naturally make the turn, so in fact you just slowly merged into the fast lane when you didn’t have to merge at all!  Alright, I can still give you a pass. You don’t know where you’re going or maybe you’re straight-up lost. You’re looking at your phone in a nervous state. You’re in a City you’ve never been to before, and you’re late to an important meeting so you don’t want to miss your turn.

The problem is that the issues aren’t relegated to tourists. Or should I say, many people act like tourists in their own towns. They don’t take the time to learn the roads at all. They don’t care to learn; they are perfectly dependent on their phones. With amazing tools to figure out directions (Google Maps) many people simply don’t care to learn. They would rather live in a state of constantly depending on their phone. I have a friend who works at Waze who couldn’t tell you which way is North if his life depended on it. This ultimately instills a lack of confidence of knowing the streets and getting a feel for the road, which is what contributes to the nervous, scared, idiotic driving conditions out there.

The good thing about bad driving is that it’s equal opportunity. Sometimes, after I see a particularly egregious driving error, I look over to identify the culprit, and to this day I haven’t observed any pattern to race or gender. It’s probably fair to say that old people drive slower, and young people faster, all things considered, bad drivers are a mixed bag. Granted, some folks come from other countries where the rules of the road are different, such as the left lane not being used to pass, but that is rooted in culture and law, not ethnicity.

Whereas most of the driving problems in San Francisco have to do with the number of tourists combined with mere congestion—thus creating some kind of situation on almost every block—another, perhaps more dangerous problem is more prevalent in the East Bay, particularly Oakland—maniacs. Maniacs drive as fast as they can, weaving in and out of traffic without a turn signal, pulling every illegal trick in the book. They drive like they have nothing to live for, and maybe they don’t, and that’s sad. I can only imagine that most of them are tweaking out on meth or PCP. There have been a lot of highway shootings in California over the last year, some caused by simple road rage. I stopped honking my horn in Oakland a long time ago. It’s just not worth it.

Let’s conclude with solutions-oriented thinking. I suppose that the simplest takeaway is to pay attention. Don’t be on your phone. Look ahead. Become aware of how traffic flows on certain roads, how the lights turn, and how to adapt to topography. I see so many people accelerating down hills. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s more common than not! When you’re home, take time and study the map online. Learn about options. Don’t be so dependent on your phone. Get to know alternate routes, so that if one option is shut down for whatever reason, you don’t have to whip out your phone. In other words, PUT IN THE WORK.

If I were president, the first thing that I would do is require all drivers to renew their drivers licenses every five years. This means taking the test all over again. People can bitch and moan all they want, but when it comes to life and death, a few hours every five years is what the Aussie’s call “fair dinkum”. (The second thing I would do is change Street Road to Road Street in Lahaska, Pennsylvania. There is another Street Road 10 miles away). A lot can happen in five years that greatly impairs your ability to safely drive. Shit, a lot can happen in a day. It’s problematic that someone can have a stroke and there’s nothing legally keeping them off the road the next day. Laws can change, too. Until driverless cars become the norm, we really ought to keep driving know-how fresh.  

For years, I was against the notion of autonomous cars. Personally, I hate the idea of giving up my freedom on the road. However, I have seen so much bad driving, and so many terrible delays caused by accidents caused by bad driving, that I have made a complete one-eighty and am convinced that they will be a net-benefit. It’s going to be messy though, for a few reasons. First, there is going to be a period of a decade, maybe more, where there is a mix of driverless and human-driven cars on the road. I liken it to 100 years ago when the streets were equally occupied by horse carriages and automobiles.

Another thing that’s going to happen is a slew of lawsuits. The cars are going to be programed to have to make life-and-death decisions in the blink of an eye. For example, does the car hit and potentially kill a pedestrian or avoid the pedestrian only by slamming into a tree, potentially killing the person in the car? What if there are multiple pedestrians, or multiple people in the car? What if the person in the car is Elon Musk? It’s a tough pill to swallow putting our lives in the hands of cars. Yes, the cars are programmed by humans, but it still feels like another step toward Terminator. Pedestrians are going to challenge the cars. Especially pedestrians with little respect or regard for authority. I’m picturing people in the Tenderloin walking in the middle of the street because they know that the driverless cars will stop for them. In other words, the reason why people don’t do that is because they know in the back of their brains that other flawed people are behind the wheel and might hit them. There are going to be plenty of lawsuits of pedestrians challenging the cars to the point where they get hit and die. There will also be suits on the other side, where a car is challenged by a pedestrian which causes the car to slam into a tree. These are going to be weird cases that will ultimately boil down to how the cars are coded, which should lead to some standardization across all makes and models. It’s going to be messy, but once the transition fully takes place, the roads will be a lot safer, and people will on average get where they want to be faster. I can guarantee you that driverless cars will not race to red lights.

I can only surmise that humans are fundamentally very sick in terms of our understanding of the world, as well as our intentions within it, on the road and in general. I suspect that the way we drive is a manifestation of our neuroticism. In another universe, I would basically say that everyone needs to chill the fuck out. But I realize that in general, and Americans in particular, are too far embedded in a hurry-up-and-wait, use-and-dispose culture that is not in agreement with my natural temperament. But we can all plan ahead so that we’re not in a rush. You can cut out five minutes of Youtube from your day and leave a litter earlier.

With that said, it’s only fair to note that one half of the Fundamental Attribution Error is that we don’t tend to notice when someone is driving well. “Wow, that was a nice turn!” is something no one has said ever. This is why political bumper stickers are stupid and self-sabotaging. The cars behind you are only going to form a negative association with the candidate whenever you screw up. Nobody has ever thought “well, I wasn’t going to vote for Biden, but that was such a good merge, turn signal and all, I’m now decided that he has my vote”. My point is that we only see and feel emotions about the bad driving, when most of the time, we take for granted that we’re actually safely getting where we need to get. Jon Stewart once said something like what keeps his faith in humanity is seeing the throngs of humanity merge into the Lincoln Tunnel every day. I get that.

I believe that if we can be happy in traffic, then we have truly reached enlightenment. I have a friend that attends week-long silent meditation retreats, and I once asked her how much traffic one has to suffer through to come back to reality. The answer is that traffic is just another experience, no more or less important or valuable than attending a rock concert or eating tiramisu. The key is not pretending that the traffic doesn’t exist; it’s that happiness comes from within, and often the situations that we associate with certain moods are arbitrary and based on society’s bullshit. Enjoy the moment and let traffic remind us that we share the world with other imperfect people. And be grateful that the roads exist at all.