The Daily Walk #5

Express lanes and the law of unintended consequences.

In my area, the local government approved the addition of an express lane on the highway. If you’re not aware, this is an extra lane on the far left of the highway that can be accessed for a toll.

These annoy me. Aside from the state using my money to build something they want to charge me to use, they annoy because they change people’s driving behaviors.

This was originally a 4-lane highway. 2 lanes each direction. Now, for a stretch, it’s 6/3 lanes. But not really, because that 3rd lane is gated. Pay to play. That said, when people are cruising down the highway, they now see an extra lane on their left & think “I’m just right where I should be, in the middle lane.”

But they’re not. They’re in the left-hand lane. And they’re going slower than me. Which means they’re in the passing lane, and I’m moving over, not them, so I can pass them on the right.

I am generally a placid individual. But when it comes to driving, I am more Type A than Laissez-Faire. And even as I write this I am profoundly annoyed.

I have written several articles in which I describe the law of unintended consequences. It goes something like this: Every time some large, powerful, centralized entity intervenes in an established operation - whether that’s wages, welfare, or, in this instance, the patterns of transportation - there will be, without fail, a host of unintended consequences.

In this case, the unintended consequence is how drivers view the map of the road.

Perhaps I’m wrong. It’s entirely possible that this is what the state intends. To push all the Type A drivers out there to the point where we’re insane enough to actually pay the toll, just so we can begrudgingly follow the rules as we were taught in Driver’s Ed.

To grit our teeth and pass on the left, as God intended.