So many people make driving decisions based on their individual needs. I had to give my car up a couple years ago (due to the need to pay rent and all). But when I used to drive, my thought process was always: how do I make the traffic system, and the driving experience as a whole, ideal. For example, if someone is looking to merge into my lane from an off-ramp, why not let them in? I understand not allowing too many people (esp. those needlessly aggressive drivers)—at that point you’re just holding yourself up. But what good will it do driving up and shutting that one car out? I’ll be one car ahead of them and the off-ramp will be that much more backed up. Or you cause silly accidents. Still, people make it their road goal not to let other cars in, out of some vindictive reasoning (How dare you be smart and not wait like everybody else?! [scoffs]), which I always found funny. And a bit selfish.

Traffic will always boggle my mind. But this article is one of the reasons I love Wired. They take universal issues and make them understandable. And when they’re discussing really technical things, they neither oversimplify nor complicate it. And they’re humorous. The article is about this book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt.

“The fundamental problem,” Vanderbilt says, “is that you’ve got drivers who make user-optimal rather than system-optimal decisions” — a classic case of Nash equilibrium, in which each participant, based on what they believe to be others’ strategies, sees no benefit in changing their own.

Those who seek a more efficient traffic solution use not only network topology and queuing theory but psychology and game theory, too. A typical puzzle: Waiting for an on-ramp metering light — a mild and remarkably effective congestion-control measure — has been proven to rankle drivers more than merging directly into a traffic jam. “What bothers people is that they can see traffic flowing smoothly,” Vanderbilt says. “So they think, ‘Why should I wait?’ They tend not to accept that the traffic is flowing smoothly precisely because of the metering light.”

I might get this book.