Our Case for Cooperation

I hate traffic. I generally work from home so I don’t have to contend with it on a daily basis, but I was reminded of my disdain for going slower than the speed limit during a recent visit to my native LA. I was driving with my daughter to our family reunion when we got stuck in traffic on the 405 (that’s right, it’s “the 405” and not “I-405” because we were in LA!), the 101, and the 110 – on a Saturday afternoon!!!! I can understand rush hour traffic, or traffic caused by an accident, but traffic for no discernible reason is just plain offensive.

This made me think back to Kathmandu and the best way to be in our power. While we didn’t have any accidents, and we eventually got to where we were going, I thought, There must be a better way than having to sit in all this traffic. Then I remembered that there was a study done at MIT which concluded that our time spent in traffic could be reduced by half if we just changed how we drive in relation to one another; specifically, everyone needs to stop tailgating! If you can drive in a way that you create equal distance between you and the cars both in front of and behind you, you can eliminate phantom traffic (you know, that annoying thing that happens when traffic comes to a grinding halt for no apparent reason).

What has this observation got to do with our blog? A lot, it turns out. People accept traffic as a fact of life, given the number of cars on the road and our highway infrastructure’s capacity. But traffic can function efficiently or inefficiently. By driving the way we do now (called the “car-following model”), where our tailgating causes phantom traffic, there’s a lot more stop-and-go action. This doesn’t just lengthen our commute times, it also increases the chances of getting into an accident. We could change the way we drive and create space between all the cars on the road (the “bilateral control model”); there may still be a million cars on the freeway, but everyone will get to their destination more quickly and safely by adhering to this driving etiquette.

Watch what happens when you tailgate.

So why do people largely choose to drive using the inefficient car-following model rather than the far more efficient bilateral control model? Because we think of our sitting in traffic as an individual experience rather than a social one. When we’re in traffic, all we think is, “I need to get as far as possible, as fast as possible,” so we try to close the gap between us and the car in front of us as quickly as we can. Heaven forbid we leave enough space between us and the car in front of us – what if another car changes into our lane and puts us one spot farther behind?!?! Hey! That’s where I was supposed to be!!

Yet as the MIT researchers proved, if we thought of traffic as a problem for all of us as commuters, and we all cooperated to drive in a more efficient way, then we would all benefit by cutting everyone’s commute time in half and reducing the number of accidents. You might be asking, “But what if you have one bad actor who tries to take advantage of everyone’s more considerate driving? Don’t they mess up the whole system for everyone?” Actually, they don’t. According to the researchers, traffic would get noticeably better even if just a small percentage of all drivers stopped tailgating.

This traffic conundrum is analogous to living in a self-centered versus cooperative society. When everyone’s only out for themselves, and they don’t take the people around them into consideration, they’re shooting themselves in the foot. You are likely to have much better individual results, as well as better aggregate results, if everyone saw themselves not just as individuals, but as part of a system that is better off working together.

Take, for example, South Korea’s success in containing the Covid-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, the US was considered better prepared than any country in the world to stop an infectious disease outbreak. By 2021, the US ranked 10th highest in its total cases per capita; South Korea ranked 145th. Why? Because not only did South Korea have strong response protocols in place, their population complied with the protocol. Instead of saying, “You can’t make me wear a mask!” the Korean sentiment was, “I don’t want to be responsible for making someone else sick.” This mindset literally saved millions of lives.

It’s perfectly natural for people to look out for their best interests – we all do it. But it’s time for us to consider that what is in our best interest, is to care about the people around us as well as ourselves – it’s a win-win all around.