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I'd also like to apologize to the black BMW yesterday. I'm sorry that I didn't stop closer to the vehicle in front of me at the stop light. Even though it didn't affect you in any way whatsoever, It was rude of me to not get as close as I possibly could to the car in front of me and your honking has made me reflect on my silly actions.

I dunno an extra second or two to me, at the green light, isn't that egregious to me, really. If you're at an intersection, sometimes the far lanes of the crossing road can be both empty, and totally hidden by a slew of cars waiting to go forward. This is more commonly the case, and more commonly dangerous, for traffic approaching in the furthest lane from you, since that lane can sometimes be a turn lane where right turn on red is allowed, and all it takes is one idiot driver to fuck up your whole day. Most of the times, traffic lights account for this, but it still happens. Not necessarily the end of the world if someone takes a second, and, as the meme says, it doesn't mess up my day to have an extra second of delay.

No, the real problem, to me, is the people behind the first person at a green light, and acceleration. Follow distance is purely a property of the speed at which you are going, and lower speeds are much less consequential. There is no reason not to follow the car in front of you almost to the letter, and scale your speed to match their movement. It's very annoying to me that many people will wait a full one or two seconds to "let the car in front of them go", before they even start to move. This increases the traffic delays behind you, and can have substantial ramifications for traffic throughput over time, which can be kind of a nightmare in cities with more traffic. Obviously there's always going to be a very minor delay in terms of raw reaction time, like, 250ms, in an expected environment like this where really the most that can change is that the car in front of you brakes very suddenly, so in all circumstances, you're going to need a gap that allows you to react to that, and then progressively more as speed increases, consequences increases, and the novelty and unpredictability of the environment increases, you're gonna need at least two seconds of gap and probably more like four to adequately react.

Likewise, you can cut down on traffic if everyone just accelerates a little more. Most people, I have noticed, are very conservative with their car's acceleration, which makes sense in lots of environments, as sometimes you're just rushing to get stopped by the next light down and most everyone will make it to the next light in any case, since light timings are worked out like that in advance, so it doesn't matter too much. In many cases, it would actually benefit them to go slower, as going slower might allow them to retain some level of momentum through the next light, which might help them save on gas. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast, sort of thing. On the other hand, there are some circumstances in which throughput is severely limited by a lack of acceleration since every car behind you is going to be limited by the maximum of your acceleration, so having a more conservative approach can kind of hurt traffic throughput a lot.

I wish they taught this shit in driver's ed, I wish driver's ed was mandatory, and I wish people knew how to fucking drive well. It's kind of crazy how bad lots of people are at driving in general even though it's kind of seen as a necessary thing in most of america to get anywhere.

I know this is just a silly meme, but it makes me feel a little hopeful seeing evidence of other people thinking like this on the road, y'know, responding with empathy and concern for strangers instead of immediate vengeful anger.