Chapter 69 Question ○61

Why is there a traffic accident on the independent northbound lane of the expressway, but the southbound main road is blocked? (Thomas Shering) If there is an accident on the northbound lane of the expressway, you must know why there is a traffic jam on this road.Crashed vehicles, ambulances, police cars, often immobilize the northbound lanes for hours at a time.But why does the car accident also cause traffic jams in the southbound lane?And it is often blocked for several miles in one block? After arriving at the scene of an accident, southbound drivers do a brief cost-benefit assessment.The cost of slowing down and taking a closer look at the scene of the accident is just a few seconds of delay.The benefit is to satisfy my curiosity by doing so; judging by the behavior of most drivers, the benefit seems to outweigh the cost.Of course, most drivers don't expect that a few seconds' delay in one person's decision will delay hundreds of thousands of cars behind for a few seconds.Taking a close look at the cumulative costs of an accident scene could have delayed every driver for more than an hour.

Many drivers probably wouldn't want to delay an hour just to get a glimpse of the scene of an accident.If drivers could vote unanimously on this issue, they would certainly not be slowing down.But they made their decisions one by one after arriving at the scene of the accident.At this stage, since everyone has paid the cost of curiosity, most drivers, even those in a hurry, will choose to slow down. The last set of examples in this chapter illustrate the various steps people take to reconcile individual and group interests when they do not align.