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November 27, 2006

Theory of Speed

Conventional wisdom is that speed is for making sure you won't be late arriving. But the best purpose of speed is to get away.

And the best reason to get away is to leave the crowd. This is how we know that what speed is about, essentially, is not movement from power but rather from position.

Highway driving makes this more or less obvious. What, after all, are the two biggest problems with "speed limits"? Not the posted rates, and not the cops. Instead it is the matter of driving amongst the dumb and the blind. This simple observation immediately gives the two most basic rules of driving: don't drive behind anything you can't see around, and don't drive behind idiots. Combined, it's the difference between the presumed speed limit and the real speed limit.

For one thing, driving behind either the dumb or the blind involves a transitive property: you will become effectively dumb or blind yourself. (One further complication is that driving behind something you can't see around might make you drive idiotically, and so forth. Riff amongst yourselves.)

For another, empirical evidence will show that the dumb and the blind rarely catch up to the crowd in front of them while getting away from the crowd that they create.

So, most importantly, these obstacles mean that all traffic not likewise stuck are more probably going to get ahead.

[Sidebar: now just taking a moment to enjoy the nuance of using "traffic" as a plural.]

On a multi-lane highway, the "fast lane" is the one you make by maneuvering first of all to avoid the dumb and the blind. This is a prerequisite. As a result, you have the further opportunity to capitalize on speed. That is, in trafficking, speed is the effect of routinely being in the best place before the other guy is.

That final elaboration of our definition leaves us with the main task in designing speed. Namely, we have to determine who are:
- the dumb,
- the blind, and...
- the "other guy".

As for knowing what makes a place "the best" -- well, if you don't know that, then you don't need speed.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at November 27, 2006 6:23 AM

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