‘The right lane is faster’, and other thoughts I don’t appreciate in a traffic jam

From the passenger seat, my wife shoots me a look, which I know means: You’re being unreasonable. She is undoubtedly right, and yet reason no longer has a role to play here, not when elderly joggers are running past us while we idle idiotically.

Having passed the hour and a half mark (on a journey that normally takes 20 minutes), tensions are rising inside and outside the car. At this point, Kate, previously content to be a silent passenger, assesses the situation and determines she must weigh in: “You know, the right lane is faster.”

This is the kind of comment those in the passenger seat love to make, a subtle suggestion framed as helpful but loaded with subtext. See also: “They’re letting you in”. ”Do you want me to put my map on?” and my personal favourite, “We should’ve taken that last exit.”

Rather than point out that while the right lane might be currently moving, it, too, will surely soon grind to a halt, I follow Kate’s advice and obnoxiously nose my way in. This elicits a chorus of angry horn beeps, my pathetic attempt to mouth the words, “I am so sorry”, doing little to calm the raging crowd behind me.

And the reward for such a daring move? The right lane almost instantly clogs up, and the lane we abandoned, Wonderful Reliable Middle Lane, miraculously clears. Naturally, when I return to the middle lane, the right lane opens up again, and now no one in the car is happy.

On another day, this might be the precursor to an “I told you so” fight, but thankfully, distraction arrives in the form of a common enemy: The Late Merger.

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As we approach a tunnel, three lanes become two, and while most of us accept our fate and form an orderly line, a red BMW (because, of course) speeds towards the bottleneck. Oblivious to the outrage, the driver throws his blinker on and weasels back into the lane, cutting out an entire line-up of fools, myself included.

Needless to say, there is a special place in hell for those who merge late, defying the traffic gods and leaving the rest of us to perish. Surely, at a time like this, the only logical feeling is seething indignation, and yet, from the passenger seat, I see a look of admiration from my wife: “I wish we’d done that.”