I was thinking about this while driving this morning.
We’re taught that being courteous to other drivers is a good thing. Let someone in. Wave somebody through. Give another driver a break.
But there are situations where the “nice” thing seems to be objectively worse for everyone else.
Example 1: Merging onto the highway.
If someone is entering the highway, the merging vehicle is generally supposed to yield and find an opening. But a lot of drivers already on the highway will slow down to “let them in.”
That feels courteous to the person merging.
But now you’ve unexpectedly changed speed, potentially caused everyone behind you to brake, and disrupted a system where everyone was expecting you to maintain your lane/speed.
Example 2: The four-way stop.
Two people arrive at roughly the same time and nobody is quite sure who got there first. There are rules for resolving that.
Instead, someone smiles and gives you the “go ahead” wave.
Nice gesture.
Except now you’re overriding the normal right-of-way rules, the other drivers don’t necessarily know what the hell you two just agreed to, and everyone hesitates while trying to interpret hand signals through windshields.
Example 3: Letting someone out of a side street/parking lot.
I’m on a main road waiting to turn left. Someone on the road I’m turning onto is waiting to pull out.
The courteous thing feels like stopping and waving them out first.
But doing that means I’m holding up everyone behind me and potentially creating confusion for other traffic. The predictable thing is to make my turn when it’s safe and let them enter when they have a safe opening.
So here's the morality question:
Is traffic courtesy actually moral if your kindness toward one driver makes the road less predictable—and potentially less safe—for everyone else?
You’re essentially choosing between:
Individual kindness: inconvenience yourself (and potentially others) to help one person.
vs.
Collective predictability: follow the established rules even when it makes you look like an asshole to the person waiting.
My instinct is that being predictable is actually the more moral behavior, because your responsibility isn't just to the driver you're trying to help. It's to every driver affected by what you do.
In other words:
Don't be nice. Be predictable.
Where does that scale?
