On my usual daily route to and from work I have come across various shortcuts which allow me to bypass certain busy spots and shave precious seconds off my journeys. One of these on my way home actually involves travelling further, but because of a busy junction still works out to be quicker.
Unfortunately this shortcut is not perfect since it relies on the junction being busy to be quicker; plus it has to be busy by a certain degree otherwise you would still get through the junction quicker than driving the extra mile. On my approach to the area I have a very short window in which to assess the state of the junction and decide whether to take the shortcut or risk the junction. In order to benchmark the success of the decision I try to memorise a couple of vehicles that are doing the opposite to me and then try to spot them later to see if I am ahead or behind.
Today I decided that the junction was busy enough and took the alternative route, and on my way up took note of a black Mercedes that I was behind for benchmarking. On my approach to the busy junction from the alternative route I noticed that the black Mercedes was the next to filter through into my lane, and even though I probably normally would have slowed a little to politely allow him to enter, I decided that in order for my alternative route to be successful I had to be ahead of him, so I sped up and made sure he had to wait. I also noticed that since I had a few cars closely following me he had to wait quite a bit longer, so I came out nicely ahead!
This I feel was a hollow victory, but a victory for the shortcut nonetheless.
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1 comments:
I find that when I'm not in a hurry, my stress level goes way down. That and there's a big difference between 115 and 88 kph. My wallet likes the slower rate, too.
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