----- Original Message ---- Mike Outmesguine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [...] You may be sure of that, and it's easy to leap to that conclusion. Of course traffic delays propogate. I've heard CHP say for every 1 minute of delay it takes 5 minutes to clear up. But that's not what the report was stating. The report (as much as we've seen) said that cellphone talkers don't change lanes, causing longer commutes.
Then the stories jumped to the conclusion that cellphones clog traffic. But it's the driver in front: the old guy, the truck, the Prius, or Nissan Pulsar NX loping along in front of Mr. Aggressive-But-Not-Paying-Attention college student who normally zooms around those slowpokes but since he's on the phone, he skips that manuever 20% of the time. ============ This is a no-win argument -- years ago my commute took me along the 10 from El Monte through "downtown" -- for those not familiar with that stretch, the on and off ramps had a "common section", so you could drive "around" traffic by taking an offramp and not-actually-exit and re-enter a good 1/4 mile or more "ahead" of where you were "stopped". Of course, you had to merge with two sources of oncoming traffic (one for each direction of traffic on the surface street you were crossing with that ramp), then merge with traffic actually on the freeway. All this "merging" caused such a tremendous slowdown that when all was said and done, you might have gained one or two car-lengths against anyone who stayed on the freeway in the right-most lane (or, as I often got to chuckle over, you'd actually lose ground...) As to your point about the "normally-aggressive, but on the phone" drivers not actually changing lanes, this is a good thing -- it's those "sudden lane changes" that cause the overly cautious driver that they have cut off to slam on their brakes and start a chain reaction [at the time I drove a stick shift, and most of the time when I saw this happening I would simply downshift and let the engine slow the car without hitting the brakes -- since I wasn't participating in the propogation of red-light-madness, I hoped I was doing more good than harm...] [hmmm, time for another meeting -- time to run...] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "SOCALWUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/SOCALWUG SOCALWUG website: http://www.socalwug.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
