I agree with you. However, this may be obvious, but some of that could be due to people trying to follow Google Maps, Waze, or other similar navigation system directions where the routes are generated based on what other users have done.
I drove in downtown Seattle rush "hour" traffic for the first time in almost a year earlier this week, and Maps was giving me all kinds of dangerous, traffic-jam-causing directions. Things like "make a left turn at an uncontrolled intersection, from a side street onto an arterial that's gridlocked for about a kilometer in either direction". Apparently it had been happening for awhile, because the city had installed a barrier across the median, and I couldn't have followed the directions even if I'd wanted to.
IOW, it's not just drivers ignoring the law, it's tech companies explicitly instructing drivers to break the law and cause traffic problems that the simulations need to account for now.
It is. If a driver comes across the situation you described, any action other than a right-hand turn means they should probably take a driver's ed course again. Regardless of what a robotic voice on their phone is telling them.
Google maps once instructed my wife to do a U-turn on Lakeshore Drive. Nope.
That's certainly the ideal approach, but I don't think it's realistic to plan for normal people behaving that way.
By the time I realized that Google had given me a route that would not work, breaking out of it cost me 10 minutes of sitting in traffic going the wrong way. I think most people would take the "drive like a jerk" alternative at that point, because the sunk-cost illusion is hard to let go of.
A self-driving car is basically just going to do what the mapping software tells it to as well, so the "bad instructions from tech companies" factor is a problem that needs to be addressed specifically anyway.
Yes, and driver's ed should harp on the concept of ignoring the sat-nav if it's telling you obnoxious things. See my other comment.
I don't think this concept is mentioned anywhere in the current curriculum, and I think a lot of people are ignorant enough of technology to obey it more blindly than they should.
"Maps apps" consistently give me crazy directions in Seattle, in particular things like trying to turn left onto a busy road from a side street when one block over there's an arterial with a light. I really think the prevalence of crazy directions and Uber/Lyft drivers blindly following them must be hurting traffic flow in aggregate.
Not so much actions that break the law, but rather actions that are just pointless and stupid.
And the process for reporting a map error or unsafe maneuver instruction is way too complicated to do while moving, but can't be done after you've left the area, and there's no function to just submit a voice note.
Related:
Some time back, I gave my old TomTom to a not-very-technically adept friend. I figured a little introduction was in order, and at first, I asked her to interact with the unit while I did the driving.
The first thing I did was ignore every instruction. A few minutes of https://xkcd.com/1837/ ensued.
Because I wanted to drive home the point, you won't break it by ignoring it. If you don't feel like making that turn, don't make it. The voice in the box will just recalculate, it won't get annoyed, it has infinite patience and can recalculate for as many maneuvers as you feel like missing.
This is a crucial bit of understanding that I think many drivers lack, as they blindly try to follow impossible or unsafe maneuvers like the computer's word must be obeyed absolutely.
If I had a button which could project thoughts into other people's minds, but _only one thought_ and once programmed the button can never be changed, I think I might set it to "It's okay, just go past it, turn around, and come back." I think a huge fraction of traffic snarls could be eased by spamming the hell out of such a button.
I drove in downtown Seattle rush "hour" traffic for the first time in almost a year earlier this week, and Maps was giving me all kinds of dangerous, traffic-jam-causing directions. Things like "make a left turn at an uncontrolled intersection, from a side street onto an arterial that's gridlocked for about a kilometer in either direction". Apparently it had been happening for awhile, because the city had installed a barrier across the median, and I couldn't have followed the directions even if I'd wanted to.
IOW, it's not just drivers ignoring the law, it's tech companies explicitly instructing drivers to break the law and cause traffic problems that the simulations need to account for now.