According to game theorists, the most efficient way to play "chicken" is to ostentatiously throw your steering wheel out the window, so that your opponent sees that you have no method of avoiding the imminent collision -- you have to prove that you are crazier than the person you are battling . . . and the most efficient way to merge into traffic in New Jersey, is to
not look at the other car . . . you have to pretend the car isn't there, and so when the other driver looks at you, he sees that you are not even acknowledging his vehicle and he is forced to slow down . . . and this works at a four-way Stop as well: no eye-contact, just go . . . the only problem with this tactic is the possibility that the other driver might be using the same strategy, but the twenty seconds you save on your errand is well worth the risk of collision.
That's my strategy for entering a rotary (aka a traffic circle): don't make eye contact with the driver already in the rotary or the drivers trying to merge in upstream. Four-way stops make no sense.
ReplyDeletei hope we don't enter the same rotary at the same time . . .
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