Now, I cannot vouch for the details of this article, which claims that Jerks help traffic move faster and keep jams from happening – hard to believe, eh?

Well imagine that at the busy grocery store, people stood twenty feet away from the end of the checkout counter and waited for the person in front of them to leave before they started putting their food on the checkout counter. The cashier would be standing their with nothing to do during the time between customers, and we can all see that the waiting time for all the other shoppers would go up, right?

Now next time you’re stuck in traffic and notice an empty piece of road in front of you. Many car lengths of bare pavement. Think about the fact that in order to process traffic, each segment of road is like a cashier waiting to “check you out” as you pass by. Cashiers with nothing to do means that there will be a longer wait for you, further back in line.

Now there is a “safe” distance between cars, so I am not advocating tailgating (we all know how badly traffic is affected by rear-end collisions). But excessive amounts of “idle road” means that everyone behind that road space is going to wait longer. So do your part to keep the road filled in.

But try not to seem like too much of a jerk when you’re doing it.