Interstate 5: A Manifesto

It should be a simple drive from Los Angeles to San Fransisco: 400 miles of which are on a two lane, straight-as-an-arrow stretch of the I-5. Let’s call this the golden stretch. The golden stretch is flat. The road is in decent shape. It is literally the easiest road to drive on. Yet every time I make this trek (over a hundred times now), the straightforward road seems to be far too complicated for drivers to understand, resulting in asinine traffic, overly-aggressive tailgating, accidents, lost time, lost mpg, and lost sanity.

So why does this dead-simple stretch of road pose such an issue to drivers? I’ll lay it out for you plain and simple and tell you how we can fix it. Even better, my solution doesn’t cost a penny.

The reason for the traffic is drivers who think they are more important than everyone else on the road, and are generally inconsiderate and probably unpleasant folks to share a beer with. These are the same folks you probably find weaving madly around other vehicles on five lane freeways without using their signals to save an whopping three seconds getting to Starbucks. On the golden stretch, these folks throw out universally recognized rule of “faster traffic in the left lane and slower traffic in the right.” They zoom down the left lane until they reach the bumper of a car slugging along at a measly 85mph, then whip into the right lane (no signal of course), gun it until they hit a car or truck driving at a reasonable speed for the slow lane (70mph), and then violently attempt to reassert themselves in the fast lane, edging into the tiniest of gaps, forcing the cars in the fast lane to slow down in order to accommodate our entitled friend.

Now, with this anecdote in mind, let’s take a look at the major problems caused by this approach:

1. Cutting folks off trying to get back into the left lane causes cars to brake in order to let the aggressive driver back in. This creates a domino effect: each car brakes and lags a little bit more than the car in front of them. So from one driver cutting back in, half a mile back along the road there is a huge chain of cars slowing down, usually to a speed around 60mph.

1. 1. This creates another lovely feedback loop: more angry and entitled drivers in the left lane will see this slow down, cut into the right lane, zoom ahead until reaching a slow truck or car and then cut back into the left lane — causing this same cycle to propagate back further and further. It only takes a handful of cutoffs to propagate a slow down several miles long.

1. This constant speeding up and slowing down caused by the asinine drivers significantly reduces gas mileage of all drivers on the golden stretch. Now, with tens of thousands of drivers on this road a day, people are spending much more money, and the environmental effects of the each drive is amplified due to these few offending drivers.

1. There is also a huge loss of time associated with the aggressive driver induced traffic. Compared with no traffic, an hour or more can be lost just by driver induced slow downs, not even factoring in accidents.

1. RAGE — this behavior enrages thousands of drivers on the golden stretch (including myself) daily. The negative effects caused by this rage and added stress are difficult to quantify, but no doubt expansive.

The list goes on, I’m sure you can think of several negative effects beyond these obvious ones I have pointed out. So, we know what the problem is, but how do we fix it? Well, here’s the obvious way the golden stretch should operate — and it’s nothing new:

1. The right lane is the slow lane: if you are driving below 80mph, you generally should find yourself in the right lane.
2. The left lane is the fast lane: if you are driving at 80mph or above, you generally should find yourself in the left lane. (Note: I do not condone breaking the speed limit, but the flow of fast traffic on the golden stretch is generally around 80pmh)
3. Vehicles in the left lane should yield to vehicles approaching: if a driver is approaching you in the left lane and are clearly traveling faster than you are, shift to the right lane, allow them to pass, and then shift back to the left lane.
4. Don’t tailgate or cut people off: this causes the domino effect of braking, which causes more ignorant and angry drivers to sneak to the right lane and do commit the same crime.

That’s literally all we need to solve the problem plaguing the golden stretch. 4 guidelines that already exist pretty much anywhere you drive. Apparently, the simplicity and ease of the golden stretch of the I-5 is just too much to handle for some people, so they have to spoil the pleasant drive for the rest of us.

So, to you asinine drivers out there who like to drive like an imbecile on the two lane portion of the I-5, try these simple tricks. And guess what, if everyone does it, it’ll make your drive much quicker, and you are, in fact, more important than the other folks on the road.

This problem on the golden stretch has vexed me from far too long, hopefully some people will take heed to my advice, or I may be forced to take more extreme measures…