My commute to work includes crossing the Potomac River via the Nice Bridge, where Maryland collects a toll as you leave for Virginia. I generally get there about 6AM, and there are 3 lanes open - one for the EZ-Pass only, and the other two have toll takers. Since I have the EZ-Pass, I can drive right through any lane, and as I approach, I’m looking for the shortest line because, you know, I can’t be delayed 10 ro 15 seconds as I go to work…
One thing I have noticed at this toll stop and many others - people tend to follow the person ahead, regardless of the number of empty booths. Just yesterday, I saw that all three lanes were free and there were three cars ahead of me. All three went to the center booth. I went to the left-hand lane and passed 2 of the 3 of them, wondering if the toll taker in the right hand booth had the easiest job of them all.
What do you do at toll stops? Do you go with the flow and mindlessly follow the car ahead, or do you scan all booths before picking your lane? Do you even think about it?
How about when you’re going into or out of a store - one door is held open and there’s a line of folks waiting to use it - will you wait also or open the adjacent door and proceed? Or at a subway station or stadium or any other venue with turnstiles - do you look for a short line? We all do at grocery stores (don’t we?) - why are we different in other places?
Yeah, this is what I’m thinking at 6AM as my commute is nearly done.
They’re called pack-drivers. Stay away, you’ve been warned. Same goes for turnstiles, doors, and even adults who don’t go after children drowning in pools. It’s group thinking and conformity at work. If one person decides to use a different lane, the rest will follow. Until then, everyone will do what the first person is doing.
Most of the tolls around here have four or more toll takers, but don’t have lines to section off the lanes; so people feel free to whip around from say, the lane all the way left, to the one all the way to the right. Knowing that there’s a chance some asshole will be doing this, it seems safer to go to the closest lane of the type I need to avoid collision with someone wandering around. This is usually one of the last ones on the right.
I have to cross the Mississippi River every day on a toll bridge, and the days when I’m by myself and can’t take the HOV lanes, I try to pick the toll tag lane that will put me into my exit lane on the other side of the bridge; saves me jockeying for position in the heavier traffic on the bridge. Since there’s at least one toll tag lane for each bridge lane, that makes it easy for me to know exactly where I want to be.
Sounds like what I used to have to deal with back in high school. Our school was overcrowded (I know, aren’t they all, but mine was worse; the year after I graduated it actually split into two different AA schools), and the hallways were a nightmare. But when the mindless throng would hit the sets of four double-doors that comprised the entrace/exit to our school, the first person to get there would open one door, and the rest would ever…so…slowly…flow through that one door.
Four doors available. 1,000 people waiting to get out. One door open. I kid you not, this happened every day. So, yours truly maneuvers his way through the masses, opens up door #2, makes a hasty exit, and stands bck and watches in amazement as the Hive Mind, realizing that now two doors are available for its use, begins to flow through the second one as well. Leaving the other two, of course, completely unused (this isn’t even counting the four doors that are technically Enter doors, but can be opened from either side). Maybe (maybe) one day each week, another brave soul will break free from the collective and open another door, but the crowd will inevitably dissipate before all four are opened.
The scary part is that my school is rather highly regarded in this state for Academic Excellence. Just goes to show you how well our public education system promotes individual thought.
An addendum to the above: I forgot to mention that the one door that was usually open was the Handicapped-accessible door. The first person to leave hits the button on the wall, which opens the door (can’t expend the effort to actually PUSH, now, can we?), and the rest of the sheep follow suit. Of course, the effort of having to hit the button again every thirty seconds probably exceeds the effort of just opening the damn door in the first place, but I guess the Hive Mind is too busy contemplating tomorrow’s Collective Clothing Choice to realize that.
Yeah, I was real popular in high school, couldn’t you tell? :rolleyes:
I see this at shopping malls a lot, too. And not only are all the folks on the inside heading toward the one open door - the folks on the outside are politely waiting for the folks inside to finish their exit before entering… Until a rebel like me comes along and opens another door.
This sort of behavior drives me nuts, although it is entertaining to watch in a public place. Why do people wait to go through the one open door instead of going to another door? Have any psychologists or sociologists investigated this behavior?
What boggles my mind is when I have to go into someplace like the National Portrait Gallery in London – a huge revolving door with two large ordinary doors on either side. No one ever goes through those ordinary doors (except me ) – instead, there is always not only a jam of people, but clearly-timid-about-using-a-revolving-door jam of people. (I don’t like to go through revolving doors because invariably someone with a pushchair jumps into ‘my’ wedge with me and destroys my ankle in their haste to escape lest they end up revolving around, trapped forever ‘Hey, look, kids! There’s Buckingham Palace again!’ *, or the person in the wedge behind me is pushing the door so hard it makes me stumble.)
When I walk around them and use the regular doors, I get looks what range from ‘Hey, you can’t do that!’ to the same sort of look of awe I think the first caveman gave to fire…
[hijack] European Vacation, when they get stuck in the roundabout…I admit, I once got trapped in Broad Street around Independence Hall, and could not for the life of me how to figure out how to get back on to Broad Street cos from one end you enter a square, and then go around, and back into Broad – my companion was not pleased as every time we passed it, I said, ‘Look, kids! It’s Independence Hall!’ [/hijack]
I usually try to get in position for whatever turn I might make as early as possible. When I take the Bay Bridge into the City, I shoot for the left lanes, because I take the first left exit in San Francisco. Of course, the toll plaza in something like five miles from SF, so I don’t worry too much.
When I take the Golden Gate Bridge into the City, I take the first right after the toll plaza, which is maybe thirty feet beyond the toll booths. So I get into the right lane on or before the Bridge, and drive through the rightmost toll lane. Any other lane, I’d miss my exit.
If I’m not pressed to get into a particular lane, I just scan traffic and see if there’s a shorter lane I can get into without too much effort.
The other factor is a slight worry that the other lane isn’t open, isn’t for your sort of vehicle, or something - you know the one in front works, and if there’s only one car there…
See, that’s what happens when you drive on the right side of the roadway when you’re unused to it. You wind up driving 9 blocks west, circling City Hall ( and in doing so of course, crossing Broad Street not once but twice ) and then heading back down Market Street to once again drive by Independence Hall.
Market Street is the main east-west thoroughfare in Center City Philadelphia. Broad Street is the main north-south thoroughfare. The City Hall rests at the intersection of said streets. William Penn’s statue sits atop City Hall, at the nominal crossing.
Hey, it could have been worse. Every time you passed the infamous building, you could have cried out, " Look, kids ! It’s Buckingham Palace ! "
What Mama Tiger said – I have to cross the same bridge almost every day, it seems like. I have a favorite lane to get into when I’m getting off downtown (which is the case about 90% of the time) because it means I don’t have to play as much chicken with other people once I’m through the gate.
My Dad calls this the “OMG, I DON’T HAVE EZ-PASS!!” syndrome. Especially active around the Tappan Zee Bridge, on the NY State Thruway. If you try to go thru an EZ-Pass lane without having the plastic recording box for this automatic toll-deduction system on your windshield, you do get a fine and all, but given that there’s giant purple signs everywhere marking the special lanes starting about a mile ahead of each tollbooth, you’d think there’d be less panicked swerves by the pass-less drivers in and out of lanes.
When I had to cross the Bay on the Dumbarton bridge (the least crowded, thank the IPU) before FastTrak, there was always one lane that had the fewest people, every day. That was the one I took. There is only one FastTrak exclusive lane, which is always faster than any of the mixed, so it was no problem.
But it isn’t just toll booths. Now I drive on 880 south, and there are lanes that are always faster than others, and there are points at which the fastest lane changes. All one has to do is switch lanes at this point, and you have the shortest trip. This isn’t bouncing between lanes, which is stupid, this is exactly one lane change. A similar thing happens on the next road I take.
Obviously there are many people who choose to get in the slow lane every single day. Maybe they don’t want to get to work. Maybe they are listening to a good radio program. Maybe they aren’t smart enough to pay attention to the traffic patterns. I can’t understand it, but I can take advantage of it.
I fully appreciate the concept of choosing the booth that makes it easier for you to get to your exit afterwards - I’ve done the same myself when taking the Fort McHenry Tunnel in Baltimore.
In the case of my commute these days, the booths are before the bridge, and the bridge is a single lane in each direction. You pay your toll, you cross the bridge, you’re in Virginia, and the roadway widens to two lanes. Unless you need to stop at the welcome center, you’ve got at least half a mile before the first possible turn (into a park) and over a mile before you hit the first service station.
I’d love to see someone do a study of this particular herd mentality. Funny how you hear so much about aggressive drivers, yet at a tool booth, we become like mindless cattle.
I look, study, anticipate, discrimiate before I pull up to a toll booth.
If possable I will slow down to see if a lane moves before I get there. I frequently go over a bridge w/ 1 lane that goes into 3 toll booths, if all 3 lanes are occupied, I will slow down to see who’s moving before entering the lane division.
I will look to see who might have ez-pass, and who looks like they might not have exact change. I position myself w/ manuvering room as I approach allowing me to pick my lane…
) – instead, there is always not only a jam of people, but clearly-timid-about-using-a-revolving-door jam of people. (I don’t like to go through revolving doors because invariably someone with a pushchair jumps into ‘my’ wedge with me and destroys my ankle in their haste to escape lest they end up revolving around, trapped forever ‘Hey, look, kids! There’s Buckingham Palace again!’ *, or the person in the wedge behind me is pushing the door so hard it makes me stumble.)