Have you seen this site? Perhaps you can have bumper stickers printed up directing people to it 
This has been bothering me too, lately. Qualcomm Way, which shouldn’t have abnormally large traffic, nevertheless does, because so many people are needlessly left behind at traffic lights. It’s got just enough traffic to make this a big issue, but little enough traffic that it’s irritating for something like this to slow it down more.
And Skald, while I can understand and even support your reasoning for waiting two seconds, I beg of you not to pull that trick next time you’re in Southern California. I’ve looked down the barrel of a gun for less on our roadways. (Just once, but once is enough, ya know?)
You’re not willing to abide the habit of stopping at every red light? What, you blow through every third one or something?
Seconded.
A couplethree points I don’t think have been mentioned…[ul][li]Objects in the car. People don’t want to accelerate too quickly, lest their coffee will spill or their bag-lunch/paperwork will fly off the passenger seat.[/li]
[li]Gridlock. If the left-turn lane is backed up in rush hour, traffic in general is probably backed up in rush hour. So, no desire to accelerate from a dead stop quickly if you then need to immediately brake after making the turn.[/li]
Confirmation bias. This is the hot new answer for everything… I don’t remember ever noticing it before but now it comes up in, like, every thread (:D). Anyway, you are noticing this at particular intersections where you have established that a courteous driver will strive to get traffic moving through the turn as quickly as possible. So, anyone being too pokey for you is playing into your theory, even though you’re not actually seeing more incidences of this.[/ul]
So many good posts! Uhm, yes, I stop at every light that is red when I get to it. I much prefer the eventuality that a light is green when I get to it. They proudly post a sign on Topanga Canyon Road that says Signal Sync, and if you drive 45-50, you will hit every green for about 6 miles, the only stop between the 118 and Sherman Way being in front of Lowe’s and Denny’s.
What happens, however, is that people drive 30 and instead of a light being green when you reach it, the pack drives slow enough that by the time they reach the light, it’s turning red and we have to wait it out.
All it takes is 2 cars to make sure we can’t get ahead of them.
E x a c t l y. How “long” it should take a person to start after their light turns green is when it’s safe. Don’t leave so early you’re going to hit someone, but don’t wait 5 seconds after it’s safe. But that’s not really what I mean…
ParentalAdvisory got it. From whatever time you take your foot off the gas to the time that you leave the intersection - is it 5 seconds or 15? (I haven’t timed it, these are just guesses…) If it takes the first person 50% of the green light to get through the intersection, that restrictions how fast every car behind them can get through the intersection.
An efficient group might squeeze 10 cars through, but with a slow starter, only 4 cars might get through. I’m not talking about slamming your foot down and accelerating at ridiculous rates, but I’m talking about -not- just taking your foot off the brake and letting your automatic transmission coast you through as slowly as possible.
If your goal is to not be hit by people running red lights the other way, then spending less time in the intersection, not more, seems safer to me, so I would think that getting through it expediently would be safe.
But, my point of this thread was to ask why people take off slow. So far, people seem to think it’s:
Gas
Safety
Self-absorbed (music, make up, cell/text, looking around)
Any others?
Aha, Borborygmi was posting while I was, thanks for adding to the list!
[ul]
[li]Gas[/li][li]Safety[/li][li]Self-absorbed (music, make up, cell/text, looking around)[/li][li]Objects in the car. People don’t want to accelerate too quickly, lest their coffee will spill or their bag-lunch/paperwork will fly off the passenger seat.[/li][li]Gridlock. If the left-turn lane is backed up in rush hour, traffic in general is probably backed up in rush hour. So, no desire to accelerate from a dead stop quickly if you then need to immediately brake after making the turn.[/li][li]Confirmation bias. This is the hot new answer for everything… I don’t remember ever noticing it before but now it comes up in, like, every thread (). Anyway, you are noticing this at particular intersections where you have established that a courteous driver will strive to get traffic moving through the turn as quickly as possible. So, anyone being too pokey for you is playing into your theory, even though you’re not actually seeing more incidences of this.[/li][/ul]
Objects in the car is a great suggestion! After I recorded that cop’s accident at the street light yesterday and put my camera in the passenger seat, I had to consciously change my driving so it wouldn’t roll off the seat onto the floor, that would be bad.
Gridlock is something I definitely look out for. I had not previously listed it as a cause for why people take off slow because I’m specifically referring to times when there is no one in front of them, and no visible reason (that I can see) for them to go slow.
For instance, I wouldn’t wonder why someone is taking off too slow if:
[ul]
[li]There are passengers in the crosswalk in front of them[/li][li]There is debris on the road they have to dodge[/li][li]There are potholes, it’s rainy, hailing, earthquaking, tidal waves, ufos are flying about, meteors striking, or other dangerous conditions[/li][li]Emergency vehicles are driving down the street with lights flashing[/li][li]An accident occurs[/li][li]They’re getting pulled over by the police[/li][/ul]
I’m just trying to narrow down the conditions of this event to the times when someone clearly has the opportunity to safely go through the intersection at an efficient speed.
I’ve considered confirmation bias. The problem is that two people at the head of a pack going 2/3 of the speed limit can make the pack hit 8 red lights in a row, but a pack which travels at the speed limit can hit all greens. They won’t, though, because within 2 or 3 lights they will catch up to a slow pack that is hitting every red in front of them. How does that play in to confirmation bias?
Article by Cecil on a very similar topic:
The freeway has no stoplights, so why does traffic halt?
That’s a very interesting point. In fact, some of the people that I see going slow on the freeway are definitely the cause of some of these slow-downs on the freeway. But they aren’t all victims of it.
Sometimes you can see traffic moving around a car the way a stream moves around a rock. Some car is going 45 or 50 on the 65mph freeway, and all the other cars are going 65-75 and are flowing around him. Why is he in the left lane or the second lane from the left? Why isn’t he accelerating to 65ish if he doesn’t want to get in the right lane?
What sucks is when that person meets up with another person doing 45-50 and they’re pacing each other and traffic can no longer effectively move around them.
In my opinion, that causes a dangerous condition, not only for the slow drivers, but for the drivers who want to drive the speed limit. We all know that people who are speeding well above the speed limit are a danger to start with, when you add people driving well below the speed limit to that mix, it gets even more dangerous, IMO.
Slow reactions at lights vary place to place. In Atlanta, I rarely noticed this tendency, here in Amarillo it is a given. My theory is that aggressive traffic makes for quick starts.
I read several of his pages.
He offers what he feels is a simple solution to traffic: Leave huge spaces in front of your car so that other drivers can get in front of you.
I can see how in some circumstances, this will help traffic. His animation on this page ZIPPER MERGE: Curing merging-lane traffic jams is especially compelling.
But it’s not a cure-all. I think in many traffic situations, it will hurt the issue rather than help it, as people attempt to take advantage of you. How many people behind you are going to merge to the next lane to get ahead of you, then merge again to get in front of you, because you’re slowing them down? I watched one of his videos and I wondered how many people getting in front of him had been behind him immediately before.
I don’t trust Memphis drivers enough. An uncomfortable proportion of them are reckless idiots.
…But instead, you got a lesson on driving…
Life isn’t a race.
Yes, that’s all a joke.
Dammit, when that light turns everyone in line should do a brisk, smooth, simultaneous acceleration. Not that crap where the first car goes, then a second later the second car goes, and so on. 
Seriously though, the trickle-back effect is annoying though. I like to speed up fast (not wide-open throttle though) and then cruise at a reasonable speed, I get good MPG that way.
That’ll work fine after I conquer the Earth, as all cars will be controlled from the central traffic tower for maximum efficiency. On the plus side this will mean that you’ll all get to work much more quickly and be able to nap, eat, or make out en route. On the minus side, I plan to engineer a 87-car pileup on a randomly-chosen expressway in a randomly-chosen city on a randomly chosen day once every three months. You know, for the kids.
All of it is random … except for the every three months part, and the number of cars!
I said randomly CHOSEN. Obviously I have to know when it’s going to happen,so I can videorecord it for my dinner party. And I have to make sure the other Rhymers are clear of that stretch of road. And specifying exactly 87 cars gives me an excuse to behead people in the Sadistic Mischief division.
Yes indeed. When people have to merge, it makes things so much easier to slow down just a bit to give them room to get in. I do this all the time.
However, even with this, there are two types of mergers who annoy me. The first is the person who isn’t quite sure that you mean it, and hangs back even when there is plenty of room. So, you hang back more, and they still dawdle, until I finally decide screw it, and zip off behind the car in front of me, which is now about three counties ahead.
The second is the merger who decides that if you are wimpy enough to let the car in front of him in, he should push in also. Wait your turn, schmuck. This type seems to have become scarcer these days, and the majority of mergers are just fine.
This. If it’s green, and you’re not rolling, you aren’t just screwing with the guy directly behind you, you’re messing up everybody behind you, and probably contributing to tailbacks and traffic snarls that are catch folks that haven’t even gotten in the car yet.
(Generic you, of course)
I was the person being responded to in the section you quoted, so I’ll respond specificaly to your generic complaint. Had I not seen endless accidents caused by someone running a red light, accidentally or purposefully, I would not feel obliged to scope things out. But I have seen many such accidents, and I choose to drive defensively. Hell, I’VE accidentally run red lights because I misjudged the yellow; I don’t fool myself that no one else ever will. Waiting a second or two to be sure that no one is about to slam into me is not unreasonable.
I agree (back in post #14). {tap tap}Is this thing on?
I take the time to check left and right before I start driving - I do it while I’m coming off the clutch and getting into first. You can drive defensively and not be dicking other traffic around.
Oh yeah, that was the other thing I wanted to say, Sean - I think some of the slow starting is people driving small automatic cars instead of small manual transmission cars. There is a big performance gap there.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding. If I’m one of the first couple cars in line when the light goes green, you bet I’m checking the cross-traffic. But I don’t do that while I’m at a dead stop, I’m already rolling. Do you feel like you’re not able to do that?