The Lateness (more about my calendar)

I’m almost never very late to an appointment, and rarely late at all. Being late bothers me, as my mind is filled with what I would be saying about my lateness, were I the other person and it’s not complimentary. My imagined 3rd person internalized harangue from the person I’m going to be speaking to soon is most decidedly negative in nature. (Note: Imagined internal monologues of others in response to my lack of planning are always performed in disgusted tones, while glancing at their watch, mumbling under their breath about how this meeting was a bad idea in the first place.) When I am late, it’s typically because of traffic or parking.

Traffic delays seem to present an almost insurmountable mathematical problem. There’s the somewhat challenging, but solvable non-equilibrium statistical mechanics models, say using the Boltzmann equation. I can’t really do that kind of math in my head while I’m driving, and I don’t really trust Outlook to solve it either before I leave the office. No, the truly unsolvable traffic delay calculation seems to be the seeming inability of many drivers to grasp the butterfly effect when it comes to the consequences of their own actions while driving.

Essentially, deciding to slow down by 5 mph to watch some poor sap get a ticket for driving under the influence of scrapple (no link, look it up) you affect thousands of people who have the bad fortune of being behind you. Big deal, everyone slows down by 5 mph right? Wrong. The people immediately behind slow by 7 mph, because the have no idea what the idiot up ahead is doing. The folks behind them weren’t paying attention, so hit their brakes just in time – coming to a near stop. While they get their adrenalin levels back to near normal, the people behind them actually stop in awe of the near accident that they just witnessed. The full stop ripples back as far as the fluid density is great enough to support the compression wave – maybe 4 or 5 miles. In heavy traffic, that’s maybe 8000 people on a 6 lane road – 1/2 hour delay for each so 4000 man hours of productivity, around 2.5 man years your rubbernecking just cost society. In the mean time, you’ve made me unpredictably late for my meeting.