Hmmm, no, I think that you are just making the mistake of attributing other poster’s actions to their personality rather than to the situational factors described in this thread.
That would be funnier if I’d suggested likelihood of falling into the Fundamental Attribution Error was a personality flaw.
In fact it’s quite obvious from this thread that people’s attitudes are very much based on the recency, frequency and intensity of their negative experiences with truckers.
It certainly seemed implied. Why else would such a vague accusation of the motives of the posters involved be invoked in such a passive aggressive way?
And it would be relevant to fundamental attribution error if they were justifying their own assholish driving habits.
What you described would be more of a confirmation bias, where we only notice the asshole truck drivers, and don’t notice the 90%+ that are good and courteous drivers.
The whole argument “extra two second on the rode = extra two hours at the dock” is bogus because the asshole truckers also include: professional movers (like ADF), water trucks, gas trucks, concrete mixers, garbage trucks, trucks going to construction sites, car haulers, etc. In other words, all truckers and not those where 3 seconds of driving time makes all the difference in the universe.
I don’t think that that is the argument. While I am not really on the trucker’s side on this, I don’t think it’s really fair to make such a disingenuous assessment of where they are coming from.
I think that the argument is more that it is at least 2 seconds* every time that this situation comes up, which may happen a couple hundred times over the course of a long haul, and that adds up.
*and the 2 seconds part is also not exactly a fair assessment either.
Oh look, more hyperbole without basis. Long passes a couple hundred times during a long haul?
You’re free to argue the math, though. It’s entirely possible 4th grade arithmetic wasn’t my strong suit.
I think this whole “2 seconds = 2 hours” thing is bullshit, obviously, but even besides that. Let’s accept a lesser version of that is true. Even so, when truckers take 5-10 minutes to pass another truck, they build a line behind them of 10+ people who are now, themselves, losing valuable time in their lives. So, at most, you’re suggesting that truckers are choosing to make up more time for themselves at the cost of taking time from everyone else. They’re forcing that decision on everyone else. That still makes them assholes. They’re valuing their own time as being more important than the time of all the people jammed up behind them.
Now, obviously, 2 seconds can mean 2 hours isn’t true on average. Maybe it does happen once in a blue moon. So you’d divide the number of times that happened by the number of times they blocked the road to come up with an average of time saved. So then you divide that and say, on average, they can save a few minutes every time they pass another truck at an incredibly slow pace. It doesn’t take many people behind them very long for the collective inconvenience of an impassable truck to outweigh the average benefit of the trucker in time saved.
Whatever the reason, and assuming they really are assholes, there are fewer and fewer of them, it seems.
So the problem is about to solve itself.
Yes, I think the assumption they are making is that, because truckdrivers might be sacrificing their entire Christmas vacation if they are ever two seconds later than another truckdriver, their time is inherently far more valuable on the road than other drivers’ time.
I am happy to say that any time a trucker gains by winning their “Elefantenrennen” is more than offset by the time lost by all other road users.
This is a tragedy of the commons. Everybody (and the environment) would be better off if the truckers kept their lane. All we need is regulation to keep them there.