There used to be a freeway interchange in Miami, where the Dolphin Expressway merged with I-95, that was just hell.  Commuters wanting to go north were confined to a single left-hand merge lane which, during rush hour, was invariably backed up for miles. The problem was not helped by the interchange’s proximity to Miami International Airport, Jackson Memorial Hospital, Marlins Ballpark, and downtown. Nor was it helped by the late on-ramps – built in days of lower freeway speeds and a more easterly center of population – that continuously fed commuters right into the fray.

This meant there was always a horde of drivers cutting across the painted median that purportedly divided the northbound from the eastbound traffic, effectively converting it into the second northbound merge lane the interchange desperately needed. Tourists leaving the airport were spared this ordeal, since they’d get to go around it on their way to South Beach, but their first impression of Miami would have been the schadenfreude of watching the poor locals stuck in impossible traffic, a reminder that Miami might be a nice place to visit, but it must be such a damn hassle to actually live here.

There is another road in Miami, one that still exists, that also deserves discussion because it has done far more damage to my soul. My morning commute to my son’s daycare obliges me to use an exit that, while not as bad as the freeway interchange, still backs up pretty far. And, just like at the interchange, there are many drivers who speed up the faster moving lane next to it and force their way in at the front. Unlike the interchange, however, the exit to the daycare is beautifully engineered. The exit is telegraphed far in advance, and the lane is long enough to accommodate the many cars who use it without blocking other lanes.

There are no on-ramps or merging lanes to impede the flow of traffic. There’s even a protected turn at the end where it merges with the surface street, so exiting cars can, in theory, drive smoothly through the intersection without needing to stop. Every driver is given the exact same totally uncomplicated opportunity to enter the exit lane when it starts. The traffic pattern is obvious and easy to follow. But it’s a popular exit and traffic does back up, and for enough people, the extra five minutes spent in the exit lane is too much to ask when their commute could instead take an extra zero minutes at the low low cost of cutting someone off. And so, what should be a simple, smooth flowing, quick, and forgettable exit becomes an irritating daily reminder that a lot of my neighbors suck.

I have to watch this play out every morning, and it bothers me enough that I’ve started to theorize about it. I’ve categorized the line-cutters into two camps. The first camp are the “prowlers.” These drivers take advantage of the gaps that naturally emerge in the flow of traffic. I watch them hunt for the best place to slip in, varying their speed as they size up the gaps, keeping an eye out for a driver on their phone who’s especially likely to leave an opening. Sometimes their victims come alive when they realize what’s happening and fight back, matching their speeds to block them, but this is rare. More often than not, the prowler finds their mark and slips in, causing a wave of brake lights behind them, disrupting the traffic and thereby causing new gaps for other prowlers to take advantage of, thus creating a vicious feedback loop that turns what should be a smooth flow into a traffic jam.

Getting Deep on Driving in Miami

Prowlers are dangerous because their bad behavior encourages the prideful drivers who’ve been in the exit lane the whole time, and who hate free riders, to drive bumper to bumper as a collective defense. Maybe in response to this norm-enforcing behavior, there are also drivers who adopt a more aggressive approach. I call these drivers the “battering rams,” since they simply force their way into the exit lane, gaps be damned. On multiple occasions, a driver has tried to force me onto the shoulder by merging, not in front of me, but into me. The last time a Tesla driver tried to do this (and it is disproportionately Teslas, I’ve kept track), I refused to give way, betting that she wasn’t willing to risk scraping her car against my Toyota. I was right, but the person behind me let her in. I watched in my rearview mirror as she gave me a big thumbs up. I’m certain that, in her mind, I’m the asshole who refused to let her in. 

The difference between the freeway interchange and the daycare exit is a moral one. The interchange was a mess because its design couldn’t accommodate the way the city had developed around it. Its problems were structural, and the solution – tearing it down and rebuilding – was also structural.  The problem with the daycare exit, on the other hand, is not structural. The problem with the daycare exit is irreducibly human. Nothing forces drivers to merge at the last minute; they do so only because it saves them a few minutes of time at no cost to them and costs only for others. Every line-cutter, by their own volition and under no duress, chooses to inconvenience others to gain a morsel of benefit for themselves, and this is why driving my son to daycare every day hurts my soul.

I should be specific about the harm in question. It is not the harm of the extra minutes that bothers me – the freeway interchange was much worse in this respect. Nor is it, as I once explained to a therapist, that I feel personally slighted when a driver cuts me off. We are strangers to each other, there’s nothing personal about it. Indeed (and I’m aware that I have tendency to exaggerate), but I’m inclined to interpret the disregard they show to strangers as emblematic of their disregard for humanity as such, and this is what gives the harm its particular character. It is the harm of a morally degrading nihilism.

It is a type of nihilism because it threatens to take away some of the meaning in my life, the meaning that I get, lame as this may seem, from being a responsible driver. I want to get in the exit lane where it begins and drive its entire length, even if this takes longer. I’m pretty confident I’m not motivated in this by the desire to feel morally superior to the selfish drivers, like an ego trip or something – were this the case I’d find the whole experience fortifying, affirming even, of my moral goodness, the opposite of what I’m claiming.

I think, rather, that the meaning I want to find on the road is the meaning one gets from cooperating with others. Driving is something we do together. While it is sometimes miserable for structural reasons (viz. the freeway interchange), most of the time it’s up to us whether it is miserable or pleasant. This is what I mean when I say that something as mundane as my daily commute is potentially a source of meaning in my life. The meaning it could offer is this: if I do a small piece of good by being a courteous driver, this is not wasted because I’m doing it with my neighbors who are also doing small pieces of good, and all these small pieces add up into a bigger good, something none of us can achieve all on our own. A pleasant commute, all the sweeter because we achieved it together. 

But the damn line-cutters make my commute so unpleasant.

And I think I understand why this bothers me so much more than the freeway interchange ever did. Getting cut off on the way to daycare is a double harm. There is the inconvenience of the extra minutes, the slammed brakes, etc.  – what we can call the material harms. But it also inflicts a moral harm. For comparison, legal philosophers make this distinction with regard to the harms of crime; theft deprives you of your property (the material harm), but it also deprives you of the respect you are due as a person (the moral harm). Now I’m not saying that I “own” the road and it is “stolen” from me when someone cuts me off, so the comparison is not perfect. But selfish driving morally harms the rest of us by undermining the possibility of commuting together in harmony. This is a moral, even existential, harm because what is taken away is not just the pleasantness, it’s the possibility of getting meaning from the cooperative endeavor of creating that pleasantness. They make neighborly love so much harder to feel because they exploit our cooperative instincts, like moths eating the social fabric as we’re weaving it.

There is also a third harm on the horizon. I worry that the nihilism will win and, if it does, I’ll turn into one of the very drivers I can’t stand. After all, isn’t this what must have happened to the selfish drivers? Sure, some of them have probably always been jerks. But some of them, I assume, used to think like me, used to curse the very type of driver they now are, but who gave up on hoping that Miami’s driving culture would ever get better. When the driver in front of me decides, after spending several minutes inching forward in the exit lane, to betray their principles and zoom up the shoulder and cut in front, I know their transformation is complete. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

And yet, I haven’t joined ‘em. I still roll slowly down the whole length of the exit lane. I’ve even become more relaxed about letting people cut me off without a fight. This is mostly because my son is with me, and it’s just safer that way. But I hope it’s also because I’ve become better at appreciating all the good drivers. After all, for every selfish driver, there’s ten drivers still committed to driving well, and who are easy to forget precisely because they drive well. If they still find it worthwhile, even in Miami, to drive well, maybe I can take solace in that. Instead of despairing when a driver cuts me off, it can serve as a reminder that most people don’t cut me off, and this is a much more comforting thought.