Ever wonder why you get so mad when somebody merges late? Take a look at this article from Howstuffworks.com to understand the psychology of driving: bit.ly/Q2eeii
"Vanderbilt suggests that a driver's merging style reveals his personality. There's an old cliché in driving studies," he says: "'A man drives as he lives.'" New York Times columnist Cynthia Gorney boiled the debate down to two main driving personalities: "lineuppers," who take their turn, and "sidezoomers," who race to the head of the line and dart into an opening at the last second. This is maddening to the well-behaved lineuppers. In fact, a Minnesota Department of Transportation study revealed that 15 percent of drivers actually admitted to straddling lanes to block late mergers in construction zones.
Gorney finds her description of sidezoomers gets a spirited response from everyone she questions. "When I raised [this] with my father, who is 83, he startled me by suggesting a longer label that included more bad words than I believe I have ever heard him use at one time." She even found a University of Washington engineer who had his own name for the two main merging personality types: cheaters and vigilantes.
Leon James, a.k.a. "Dr. Driving," whose Web site has a string of articles under the heading "The Great Merging Debate," says merging areas are especially challenging because there are basically two styles of merging that are often incompatible. When early mergers see the late mergers zip by, "most drivers feel irritated, some angry and roadrageous," he says. Trying to block them is "dangerous, illegal and begging for a confrontation.""
Courtesy of Howstuffworks.com
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