An unyielding situation
If you live here, you've seen it - drivers who refuse to yield. But the state's outdated roads don't help either, specialists say
By
David Filipov
Globe Staff
/
October 5, 2008
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DUXBURY - Tuesday at 4:48 p.m.,
Yield.
If you drive on Massachusetts highways, you've been in this situation. Maybe you've been cruising in the right lane at highway speed when another vehicle careened down an onramp, and past the yield sign. Maybe you've been that driver who merged onto a high-speed route without looking. Probably you've been both.
The rule in the state driver's manual is as clear as Route 24 north on a Sunday morning: "Yield the right-of-way to drivers already on the highway." So why do Massachusetts drivers resort to tactics no one would dare attempt in Moscow, Milan, or Mosul?
Theories abound to explain how two drivers can be on course for a high-speed crash and at least one of them is not sure - or couldn't care less - who has the right of way: outdated highways designed for bygone speeds and traffic volumes; drivers who have no clue as to the rules of the road; drivers who derive misplaced pride from being downright rude on the road.
One reason drivers everywhere have difficulty yielding is psychological, said Tom Vanderbilt, author of "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)."
"Our brains have a bit of trouble adapting to the new situation and its accompanying sensations," he said in a phone interview. "Yielding onto a freeway is for many people a quite stressful experience, often happening at high speeds with little time for deliberation, so it's perhaps not surprising that the proper behavior sometimes goes by the wayside."
Many people, he added, drive for years after they've forgotten the right way to interpret right of way. Differences in drivers' personalities add to the confusion (this may also account for drivers who don't know how to handle rotaries).
"Some drivers are inherently aggressive, some inherently polite, and these conflicting styles lead to misunderstandings in traffic," he said. If a driver does give way in an onramp/highway confrontation, a driver traveling "at full speed behind may not be expecting them to slow."
This results in rear-enders, which account for many accidents on the state's onramps, said Lieutenant Stephen J. Walsh, who commands the Traffic Program Section of the State Police.
"You don't want to be too aggressive, and you don't want to be too passive,"he said.
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Hingham, Exit 15, Route 3 northbound, 3 p.m. Tuesday - A yellow
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Older, narrower highways with lots of traffic, such as Route 3, present a particular problem, said Arthur Kinsman, a spokesman for AAA Southern New England, as he drove south on the highway at Exit 16 in Weymouth. There, the offramp and the onramp, are so close that drivers crisscross the road chaotically. "It's crazy!" Kinsman said.
"A lot of our roads are functionally obsolete, the width of the lanes are antiquated, the onramps and offramps are antiquated," Kinsman said. "A lot of these roads were designed when there was a lot less traffic, and people drove a lot slower."
Because Massachusetts roads were built over travel routes that date to the 1600s, he said, highways sprung up in a less orderly fashion, and with less room for ramps, then someplace like Nevada, "where they have lots of space to design."
And here? "You have to drive like a riverboat gambler," Kinsman said.
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Dorchester, Exit 13 Interstate 93 south, 6 p.m., Monday. A Globe reporter is trying to enter the highway in moderate traffic. The distance of the merger lane feels like it could be measured in toy dachshunds. The reporter guns it and pulls out just in front of mail truck, forcing it to slam on the brakes. The angry postman gestures appropriately.
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State highway officials are aware of the yield problem. Neil Boudreau, State Traffic Engineer for MassHighway, experiences it every day on his commute to Boston on I-93. It's more of an issue for the state's older highways, he said. Although they have been upgraded to meet national standards for speed limits set out in a guideline Boudreau calls "The Bible," many Massachusetts roads "were designed for a different era."
Today, the Commonwealth builds roadways with a longer acceleration lane for drivers entering the highway. (Take, for example, the Big Dig.) The new onramps don't need yield signs because drivers going at the same speed in the same direction are able to merge easily, Boudreau said.
But as a result, there can be different rules for different onramps, sometimes on successive exits. At Exit 7 of Route 3 in Plymouth, the connection with the new, high-speed section of Route 44 features the newfangled onramps, but Exits 6 and 8 on Route 3 are old-style, with shorter acceleration lanes and a yield sign.
"It helps add to the confusion," Boudreau said.
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Exit 7, Route 3 south, 7:30 p.m., Wednesday - A blue Ford Bronco pickup merges onto the highway, forcing the driver of a Subaru Outback to make way. The Subaru driver, unaware that there is no yield sign, honks in protest. The Bronco's trucker responds with a rude gesture, which the Subaru driver returns.
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According to one measure of road safety - highway deaths per million vehicle miles traveled - Massachusetts rates the safest among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Arizona, which has a general population comparable to Massachusetts, and a similar number of licensed drivers, suffered three times as many traffic fatalities in 2006.
But in Arizona, drivers spend more time traveling super-fast on highways that generally have higher speed limits than in Massachusetts. The low fatality rate in the Commonwealth has something to do with clogged highways, said Jeff Larson, general manager of SmartRoute Systems, the Cambridge-based traffic monitoring service. Congested roads often force drivers here to go slower. Most yield violations result in frayed nerves and angry swerves, not accidents or tickets. So the lower fatality rate, Larson said, does not necessarily mean that in Massachusetts people drive safely.
Bad driving is seen as a Bay State bragging right, he said. Drivers expect other drivers to violate the rules, including the rule on yielding. So for the car on the onramp, not to yield is the norm, rather than the exception.
"There shouldn't be a different rule for driving in Massachusetts and the rest of the country," Larson said. "But what is seen as acceptable is different in Massachusetts. We take pride in the fact that we drive the way we do."
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Exit 8, I-93 north, 10:15 a.m., Tuesday - A Volkswagen Touareg accelerates from the onramp, toward a spot where a blue New Beetle is clawing its way through moderate traffic. The Beetle driver does not yield the space, but the Touareg driver, engaged in a cellphone call, does not look as his vehicle forces the Beetle to brake suddenly. He ignores the Beetle driver's angry gesture.
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"In short," said Vanderbilt "the perfect highway would have no onramps."
David Filipov can be reached at dfilipov@globe.com. Globe correspondents Casey Ramsdell and Anne Baker contributed to this report.
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