Alone in a Sea of Machines

Woohoo! Friday!

Several years ago on my way to work I had a truly revealing commute experience that I've thought and talked about many times since. There is one of those terrible merge experiences northbound I-405 to eastbound SR-520. This is a daily mess as "the flock of nerds" converges on Redmond. It's been long enough that I don't remember where this starts other than to say it was around that merge. As I drove I noticed a small sporty car, I think it was a Honda, appearing quite large in my rear view mirror. So large in fact that it's front license plate was not visible.

I was in the right lane and as soon as there was a Honda's length + 1 inch free space on its left my new car pool buddy slammed into the open space, roared up a couple car lengths, rushed back into the right lane and then I lost sight of them. Shortly after traffic slowed due to merging up ahead and I changed into the left lane. I moved ahead approximately 20 car lengths and while doing so slowed slightly to create some following distance. Just as I got breathing room between me and the vehicle ahead of me, my car pool buddy decides that my front bumper might be a nice place to ride and does a NASCAR emergency pit maneuver in front of me.

Twice more this occurs on the freeway as the Honda moves back and forth between the lanes in a vain attempt to arrive at its destination 43 seconds faster than the rest of us. I watch in muted horror as lives and property are risked to advance the needs of this one driver over everyone else on the road. The Honda again disappears ahead of me and I go back to the audio book I was enjoying. Taking my exit I arrive on the surface street near my office. Approaching my last turn I look in my rear view mirror and I'm mortified to see the same Honda again perform the Turducken maneuver resuming its original position in my back seat.

I round the corner, Honda on my tail. I pull into the small street that encircles the office complex I work in, Honda right behind me. This goes on all the way into the garage I park in! The driver dives into a spot not far from me and jumps out. All this time I was so distracted by the sheer insanity of the event I didn't notice the driver. We'll call her "Janine". I'm sure that my face looked something like one of those wrinkly dogs and my lip was absently twitching as I walked up to her. I'd known this person to be the definition of sweet and polite. Having worked with her for a couple of years I never would have guessed that she secretly yearned to pilot low flying jets at mach 9 through rush hour traffic. I would have picked her for knitting rather than whizzing past traffic with her hair on fire.

She was completely oblivious when I asked why she tailgating me and kept cutting me off. I mean it; she had no recollection of her Mario Kart behavior at all! Since then every time I've had bad experiences in traffic my brain works its way back to Janine and I began to form a theory around the state of mind people enter in when they drive in traffic. To follow along with me I need to take you to a place that may be uncomfortable, at least I know it is for me. That place is a state when you are utterly alone, anyplace where you are completely sure that you can't be observed by another person in any way. Now consider how your behavior differs between that place and being in public. Do you bite your finger nails? How about unreservedly pass gas? Go mining in your nasal cavity? Add to your belly button lint collection? Ok, well, that last one may just be me.

My point here is that when a person is alone it doesn't occur to them to be polite. There's no one else there to offend, right? So, sitting back and attending purely to one's personal requirements seems only natural. For some it's a stress reliever to just sit back and "be yourself". This is what I think occurs for people like Janine. When they sit behind the wheel of their vehicle and enter into traffic the other cars on the road are just that, cars. I don't think it occurs to them that there are actually people sitting in those seats. Shortly after entering the flow they settle into that same state of mind they do when they manage to steal a few moments alone before the kids get home from school, or the spouse arrives, or the County Sheriff busts in. Zooming past traffic and cutting other cars off isn't a problem. Those other vehicles are simply objects on the road to be avoided.

So that's my theory. It probably needs a snazzy name, like The Solitary Motorist Theory, or The Traffic Singleton Hypothesis. I may just call it Rick. In any case, here's a way of fighting back against falling prey to this behavior. As you toodle down the road pretend you are on your way to a lovely dinner with a large group of friends. There's going to be laughter and lively conversation. It stands to be a momentous night. Stories will be told and retold for years about the event. Now pretend that all those cars around you on the freeway are being driven by the friends you are about to have dinner with.

I'll admit that some of these folks are the types who openly consider the world as something they have exclusive rights to and the rest of us are simply there to service their needs and provide distraction to stave off boredom. However, the optimistic side of me (it's a small side, I know, maybe only visible for a 10⁰ arc) wants to think that the raging selfishness that haunts us on the freeway isn't who we really are and if we can acknowledge it we can rise above it.

Don't drive angry! Drive weird!

Nerd, nerd, nerd or Commute Tech

nerd [nurd]

-noun
Slang.

1. an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit: a computer nerd.
   

-verb
Slang.

1. to engage in activities that causes others to smile plastically, nod and say "Oh, sure, uh huh" followed by them apologizing for having to leave the conversation because they just realized they agreed to meet a traveling Shammy Cloth salesman at their house and they don't want to miss the opportunity.
   

Ask anyone who knows me and knows that I quickly and enthusiastically refer to myself as a nerd. With this understanding of my internal workings it then is no surprise that in an attempt to reduce the pain of an Extreme Commute I would attempt to create a supporting gadget infrastructure. That's generally how I approach everything with the exception of God and my marriage. Tammy is supportive of my nerdology but she has my satisfaction meter happily pegged and requires no gadget augmentation.

One of the technologies I've always been interested in but really never had a reason until now to dig into is GPS. We are currently playing around with a couple of devices with GPS and a couple of interesting applications of it. Lets' start with the obvious GPS application, turn by turn directions. A couple of birthdays ago Tammy got us our first GPS receiver and we became instant fans of no longer having to think about how we were going to get somewhere. Punch the address in and listen to Doris tell you where to turn.

Just as we really started to get used to having this device at our disposal we parked under the Convention Center in Seattle with the GPS prominently displayed in the window. It was December (I think we were at the ACT to see A Christmas Carol) and the ride home was pretty cold without a passenger side window. Lesson learned. The replacement we chose was the Garmin nűvi 265WT. Here's the list of features we like about it.

• When the annoying lady tells you where you are turning next, she doesn't just say "turn in 100 feet". Most people, us included can't judge 100 feet while moving and really it's for the best that we aren't practicing our distance estimating skills while driving don't you think? What it does say is turn in 100 feet on Maple Street. The name of the street keeps the instruction in the wheelhouse of driving a car and keeps your brain from having to translate.
  
• Built in traffic alerts were a big part of choosing this model. It works by reading traffic information on an FM frequency and the service works in most populated areas. It does a pretty good job of guessing how much of a delay is on your path and trying to route you around it. I've had it guess wrong a couple of times so we've gotten used to taking what its saying and planning our own detours in areas we know. It has tried to tell me to take the Ferry from Seattle to Port Orchard a couple times. The only other downside to this feature is that you have to plug the GPS into the 12 volt power adapter to receive the traffic data.
  
• It has a built in Blue Tooth speaker phone that works fairly well. I recommend not trying to set that up while the car is in motion though or you may inflict your technology on others.
  

All in all we are pretty pleased with Doris. The device is tough, and well made. The screen is large and easy to read. You can update the maps via the SD card port on the side however the cost of the updates made me do a quadruple take!

For Music Tammy and I employ different solutions, one the results of learning lessons from the other. Since we are talking about a commute that combines more transportation methods than just a POV the only really solution is a portable one. Now as rad as the Walkman was, today the MP3 player is king. My first foray into this ground was the iPod Nano. I could go on and on about the ups and downs of this device, about how I love the size and the interface and how much I despise iTunes, but that just devolves into a "My dad can beat up your dad" conversation eventually, so I'll pass. Before I talk about where we did land though, let me take a second and talk about some things that led us down the roads we chose.

• How the device connects to other stuff, namely the car. There are 3 basic ways you can make an MP3 player make noise through your car speakers.
  
  • Plug the headphone out jack of the MP3 player into an Aux port in your head unit. This of course requires that your car's audio system has an Aux port to do that with. We replaced the head unit in Tammy's old car with an aftermarket solution mostly for that feature. Our Elantras have this as a standard feature.
    
  • Buy an FM transmitter that plugs into MP3 player and broadcasts to your FM radio. Aside from the extra wires and power needs, this has just never worked well in my experience. The quality is just bleh.
    
  • Stay in Apple land and use the iPod interface found in many current car stereos. This is, by far the most elegant solution out there. The cable that you plug your iPod into also recharges the device and you can control the iPod using your car stereo's controls. I had this in my last car. The downside, for me, had to do with all the stuff I couldn't stand about iTunes/Apple.
    
• Capacity is a huge consideration with MP3 players. For you nerd's of another sort out there, this is basically how many songs the device can hold. If you are just starting to think about MP3 players this will seem like just a measure of how many hours of music does one person need before they get back to their house and can put different stuff on. On the surface that's a very valid way to look at this. However, another consideration is how you use the device. We put thousands of songs on ours, which allows us to group songs using playlists to suite the mood. There are some really terrific love songs out there, but when I'm behind the wheel of the car at 6 AM at the end of a long week of sleep deprivation I want nothing but songs that go THUMP until the car is parked or I turn the wheel over.
  
• Form factor. This is just shorthand for how big and heavy is the thing. It may occasionally be useful to have a device heavy enough to stun small game animals, but short of all forms of commercial food distribution disintegrating for some mysterious reason let's stay true to the term "portable". I did push the edge for a time with a device by Archos but it really didn't fit the portable definition.
  

Tammy is currently using an 80GB Zune. I like this device. It works well, and gets an A for capacity. The big disappointment however is the Zune software. I'm not sure what it is about the business folks who drive projects like iPod and Zune, but there's a word they should all find the definition for and attempt to obtain some form of aversion therapy to avoid. That word is "Proprietary". Yes, I know, you need to separate yourself from the competition and all that, but let me give you a couple other words that in the long run will let you win a respectable share of the market. Value, Quality, Functional. Notice I didn't say anything having to do with ascetics? Looking cool is pretty low on my list and if you can't get the other 3 don't expect me to buy your gadget! So, some pain, but Tammy uses her Zune daily and likes it.

After seeing Tammy work with the Zune and my iTunes experience I went to a more generic solution the Creative Zen X-Fi. This device is small and light with incredible sound quality. It holds 32GB which is plenty. The only downside is that the buttons have a cheap plastic feel to them and the center button in the pad really requires a deliberate push to activate, on mine at least. The other feature that I was really excited about, built in wireless networking, turned out to be a flop. It's not that it doesn't work as advertised; it just isn't as useful as I'd hoped.

Something that both Tammy and I love about our music players is the music services that are available. These services allow you to subscribe to their entire catalog of music. Think of this as a lending library (with no limit to the number of items you can have out at one time) that can stop the songs from playing on your device if your subscription isn't kept up to date. If you are the type to buy one CD a month chances are these services will be useful to you. I use Rhapsody and short of some quirks here and there really like having that much music to choose from. Tammy uses Zune Pass (yup, here's our friend "Proprietary" getting in the way again). The one positive side to Zune Pass is that each month she gets song credits that allows her to keep 10 songs per month. Now if we could just get Zune to play nice.

Lastly fellow gadget fiends are the cell phones. Now I'm not going to get into a full blown cell phone discussion here, but I do want to talk about something I've been playing with lately and that's the GPS on my cell phone. I have a HTC Touch Pro 2 that I've been using for a few weeks now. Other than the standard features of every email enabled cellular device out there, I've been having a nerdy time playing with a service called Accutracking. The brick-o-cell phones you see out there these days have 2 devices in them that provide some interesting applications. Now for you conspiracy buffs out there (and well those of you who are actually hiding from the Government) you are about to cringe like you've never cringed before. These devices have both a GPS and nearly constant access to the Internet. This means, with the right software you can use your phone to keep running track of where you are at all times.

Ok, stop there. I know, I know, you all just inhaled through your teeth and screamed (as Tammy's friend Elaine would pronounce it) "AWHOUGHT?!?!?!" which is southern for "WHAT?!?!?!?!". For that whole line of thinking let me say one thing, off button. What I want to talk about here is the practical commuting application of this, not the misuse of it to round up all the folks who can't figure out when it's smart to use something like this or not. So, Accutracking is a service that combines both these abilities of my phone by periodically checking my location on the GPS and then uploading that location to their service. Using that data they plot my location on a map along with the speed I'm travelling at.

They offer 2 compelling features with their service in the form of email alerts. The first is a form of fence that allows you to draw a circle around a particular location on a map and any time the client passes in or out of that circle it sends email. We use this to warn Tammy when I'm getting close to her in the evening. As I approach the RTC she automatically gets an email saying that I'm approaching. The other feature that might be interesting to parents of driving age teens is a speed limit alarm that will send email when the GPS exceeds a specified speed limit.

Well, this post has gone on forever so I'm going to finish up. I'll probably talk more about gadgets for commuting in the blog because I can't really help myself. Take solace in the fact that you can always click the X and that if you post a comment asking Tammy to pick on me for you, she probably will.

Don't drive angry! Drive weird!

A report from the field

Happy Wednesday!

Since Tammy has been schlogging back and forth by herself this week I thought we'd share some of the fun she's been having as well as some of her favorite commute experiences.

Tammy and I couldn't be different behind the wheel. What causes me to roar and yell colorful phrases, merely appears on Tammy as a comment and more often as simply a heavy sigh. Now, don't get me wrong, Tammy is every bit as frustrated as I am, she just has a minimalist's approach when letting it surface.

The first item that I thought we should discuss is something Tammy terms "The 1000 Mile Road". Running from Purdy down the length of the Key Peninsula is a 2 lane stretch of madness called Key Peninsula Highway, KPH for short. For a good distance down this road this is a state road called SR302. The speed limit range runs from 50 MPH along the state route, 45 MPH when it becomes a county road, and 35-30 MPH through the little towns and hamlets along the way.

This is a great time for a short intermission. Along KPH not far from where we live is a little "town" called Home. Nope, this isn't a bad attempt at Leave It To Beaver style humor (well ok, maybe it was for the folks who named it) the place is really called Home. It's a quaint little place full of quaint folks doing quaint things. More than once I've been at the gas station in home and seen deer grazing on the lawn next to it. If you ever happen through this little spot, stop and see Claude and Claudette at the Trillium Creek Winery. Keep an eye on Claude during your tasting though; he has a heavy hand when he pours. Oh, and I got a terrific $175 ticket for speeding here which taught me to be a devotee to keeping a light foot in this 35 zone. So, please, stop tailgating me through Home, and passing me might not be the best choice either.

So, how did KPH earn it's less than flattering name. I should start by saying that it's not really 1000 miles long, only about 18 or so. The name comes from the behavior of the motorists on it. Imagine you have spent the last 2 hours fighting for your life in the Miramar like battle that is I-5 ("I'm too close for missiles Goose, I'm switching to guns"). You are now in the cute, sweet green, pine tree lined road that takes you home. "Just 18 miles more, that's all, really just 25 minutes, then I'm feet up and ready for the stress to drain". Hah! Nice try. So, here's the downside of living in the area we do. There are just some folks out here, mainly driving 1977 Datsun pickups loaded with the entire scrap remnants of an aluminum travel trailer, that can't seem to drive faster than 25 MPH. I get it, I really do. Either their vehicle doesn't go faster than that, or they don't have the hand-eye coordination to safely do the posted limit. Heck, maybe they just aren't in a big enough hurry to go any faster. All valid reason to travel slowly and I don't begrudge them that. Just one simple request, please, for the love of all that's good and right, when you see cars behind you that do want to drive the speed limit, pull over and let them by.

There is a small silver lining of course to spending time behind one of these folks on the road and that's when they turn off before you do. There have been several times this has earned an audible expression of relief/joy from everyone in the car.

We've talked a bunch about merge related behavior recently so this is a good time to show you Tammy's favorite merge. Forgive the image, she took it with one hand while gripping the steering wheel hard enough to turn coal to diamond. Out along SR16 is an interchange called Burley/Olalla. This interchange used to have traffic merging from the side streets in the T intersection from Hell. The WDOT did a fine job of rebuilding the interchange into a functional standard freeway style set of ramps. To do this they had to completely close this interchange for more than a year (I think). This pushed the traffic back to the exit at Purdy which is, umm, our exit.

The exit to Purdy is already overloaded. We recently had a new Hospital built in the area and a ton of folks live on this little tonsil called The Key Peninsula and it's a popular route to places like Shelton. With the added traffic, it wasn't long before the line started backing up onto the freeway.

Let me take a moment to talk about freeway shoulders. Shoulders are there to allow motorists a place to remove themselves from traffic when they have equipment problems or similar situations that force them to stop their vehicle. Because of the purpose of this area, the shoulders collect all the freeway garbage like nails, glass, and lots of other things that are not good for your car. This is also the place where the road has its edge and if you've ever seen the edge of asphalt, you'll notice that as it wears it begins to degrade in this location. The bottom line here is it's neither smart, nor safe and unless posted that's it' allowed, it's illegal to drive on the shoulder.

People's first response to this extra traffic spilling over onto SR16 was to begin queuing on the shoulder. On the surface, this seems like a polite thing to do but unfortunately they didn't consider the paragraph above nor did they think about the fact that the previous onramp was on a few hundred yards away. Soon the queue backed up all the way to the previous onramp leaving anyone who else who needs to exit no choice but to stop in the lane of travel and wait, or try and jam themselves up at the head of the line! To solve this mess, the WDOT came along and re-engineered the exit creating a merge farther down the off ramp so that cars could use both the lane and the shoulder to line up in from 3-6 PM. I'm not even going to get anywhere near the weirdness that occurs around the time limitation in place, I'll leave it to you to consider the implications there.

Now, low and behold, the work at the Burley/Olalla interchange is complete! It's wonderful out there. They did a fine job. They have yet though to undo their re-engineering at our Purdy ramp. The original exit appears to be able to deal with the volume (barely) but some people just can't resist seeing that wide open shoulder and zipping past the cars in the lane. I'm happy to discount the folks that seldom take this exit and it doesn't occur to them that the people in the left lane are lined up for a reason. Unfortunately, what you get are Zoomers doing 40-50 MPH down that shoulder and slamming themselves in at the last moment. As soon as you clear the merge caused by Zoomer, the jam breaks and everyone moves on down to the next conundrum, The Purdy Spit. I'll leave that for another day.

Tammy asked me to leave you today with these words of wisdom – "Take it as a sign, if you get passed by a School Bus on the freeway, you're going too slow."

Don't drive angry! Drive weird!

The Equipment Special

Today I'm going to talk a little bit about the equipment we use for getting from point A to point, umm, well, to point Z-75/2L. Sorry, it's a long commute and 'B' just didn't seem appropriate somehow.


First lets talk cars. I'm not a car guy, sorry. I'm a computer guy and if this were a blog about computers I'd yammer on needlessly about bits, bytes and heck I'm falling asleep with that junk so I can imagine how you would feel. That being said, there's one thing about cars I do understand, how much cash they suck out of our checking account.


Tammy's last car was a 2005 Chevy Cavalier. She drove the stink out of that little machine. It was essentially new when she bought it and we traded it in just as it tipped 180k miles. She owned this vehicle just a tad over 4 years so 45,000 miles a year. It was paid for but just started to nickle and dime us to death leaving us with little options but to engage in one of the most loathsome tasks in all of adult life, car buying.


Thankfully Tammy had spent almost a year shopping for her replacement so she had it pretty well narrowed down into buckets that were divided into different budget levels. Where we landed was Hyundai. That left us with picking a dealership to get abused by. We figured that staying out of the big counties which reduces the sales tax rate would be smart, so we went into Silverdale and had a chat with Jorge at Parr Hyundai .


Let me say that we couldn't have been happier with both the dealership and Jorge. They did something that I have never experienced before at a dealership, they sold us a car. No, they didn't look for attachment locations for their saddle, they didn't see how quickly we'd take to their bit. Jorge asked us what we needed, showed us what he had, explained the virtues of each option and then worked the forms until we had a price that seemed fair to us. He even did this crazy thing he called a "Test Drive" where he took us out in the car and showed us all the features.

We were so happy with how the day was going (and it was the better part of a day to get the job done) that in the middle of it all we went all Costco on him and asked him to start working on a 2-pack. We ended up getting two 2010 Hyundai Elantra's . Tammy's is white mine is black.

These cars have all the things you'd hope to find in your PSCCV or Puget Sound Commute Combat Vehicle. They have great head room, comfortable seats, and enough options standard to keep you from feeling like you are piloting something that recently had meth cooked in it. We particularly like the entertainment system with the built in USB port. Combine this with things like 33 MPG, $16k purchase price, and 10 year/100k power train warranty, we feel good about the purchase. My only complaint is that both cars have annnoying rattle somewhere in the dash on the passenger side that we need to have looked at.


OK, now for the other piece of "equipment" we employ in our commute, the transit bus. One of the things we are trying to do is not drive the mileage up on both our cars and one of the great benefits provided by the company I work for is the Orca card (if you aren't a Seattle are person, that's a regional bus pass). I mentioned my bus routes in an earlier post so clicky-clicky if you need that info. I do want to mention a couple of things about my recent experiences in mass transit.


I haven't ridden a bus since I was a kid and I must say that trepidation just wasn't a strong enough word to describe how I approached this. I don't mind the little bit of walking required to get to the stops, even in the crappy weather and I do really feel lucky to have this at my disposal. In general the drivers are friendly, the passengers are polite and the experience has been positive. I want to save "bus etiquette" for its own post, but what I do want to talk about here is the buses. These are truly amazing pieces of engineering. Many of them use alternate fuel solutions which is kitch, cool, happenin' and a bunch of other words I really don't know how to use because I myself am none of these things.


The one thing I just can't get over is the really giant articulated buses with that accordion thing in the middle. I love to sit just behind this area on the bus! I'm captivated by the way the articulation provides 3 individual perspectives moving separate from one another and what makes this all the more fun is that they have placed seats in the articulation that I've taken to calling Gumby Seats. If you don't get the reference, try watching something other than cartoons with square clothing.

Well that's all for today other than to say if you happen to be sitting on a bus in one of those seats and you see an egg shaped man wearing a teardrop fedora and smiling at you in a vaguely disturbing way try giving him $20 to see if he'll stop.

Don't drive angry! Drive weird!

A Simple Story of a Boy Named Zoomer

Happy Monday!

I'm on call this week for work so I'll be hunkered down in the home office. We will have our industrious field reporter, my wife, Tammy to relay her ongoing extreme commute stories. Everybody give her a hand! (OK, if you find yourself clapping right now, turn off your computer and find a good book.)

In the mean time, let’s reach into the Little Box of Commute Terror or as I like to call her after 2 martinis, Misses Blandinhable. Nope, no idea why that particular name seems appropriate, but I do love a nice martini.

Misses Blandinhable produced a fine commute frustration for us to discuss today. This lovely scenario commonly occurs like this. You have joined the line of weary travelers preparing to exit the freeway, something our British friends would refer to as "queuing" (an activity for which they apparently have a national skill for).

So, you're doing the responsible, respectful thing, waiting in line, paying your dues. In other words you are adhering to basic skills that were taught to all of us at an early age, hopefully by our parents, but if not you likely learned this lesson in kindergarten. The bottom line is I think it’s safe to say that everyone understands that cutting in line is wrong and when done while operating a death machine is amazingly dangerous too.

Do you like "zoom" or "whoosh" for what’s coming next? I'm a fan of zoom.

Zoom, our fabulous example of assembled questionably viable cells flies by you. You begin to hear this sound, "weep, rverp, mahnleep, rurp glip" as the obvious Golden Globe candidate for Best Absurd Freeway Comedy plays in reverse and you realize that the likely cause of your delay in exiting is in fact, Zoomer and his compatriots, the Zoomettes. The reason being is that Zoomer is about to do a little thing called The Gore Point Slam.

You know that little pointed triangular area that exists at exits? That little area is called a Gore Point. I probably haven't mentioned but, in the early '90's I spent a few years working as a radio operator for the Washington State Patrol. Like any organization it has its challenges and being government run those challenges are compounded. However, I've got to say some of the finest people I've known and worked with I met while working there. Some of the most formative experiences of my life occurred during those years, and I look back on them with real appreciation and respect.

OK, Zoomer approaches the Gore Point looking for his victim. This gives the patient, respectful motorist who happens to be there at the time, two choices. They can either close the space between themselves and the car in front of them, effectively performing another unsafe tailgating maneuver or they can take the safer, ethically higher ground and give Zoomer enough room to safely inflict his selfishness on everyone in line.

What a choice to have to make! The former provides a momentary sense of personally administered justice but the latter, regardless of the carnival strength test bell ringing stress level it causes, is probably the safer tactic that will land on the higher moral ground. I do attempt to settle for the clang that bell makes, but I'm going to confess that on more than one occasion I've gone Charles Bronson on more than one Zoomer.

Before we call it a day, let me share with you a term Tammy coined, The Butthead Lane. The prime example of this lane has been introduced by the new HOV freeway ramps like that found on I-5 in Federal Way. This style ramp system recently placed on I-5 in King and Snohomish counties allow carpools and bus the opportunity to enter and exit the freeway directly to and from the HOV lane.

Where this ramp connects to the HOV lane it creates a new "left lane" that runs for a few hundred yards that allows the merge to occur. This my friends is The Butthead Lane. This lane introduces 3 distinct behaviors.

1. Motorists entering the freeway from the surface street use the space to properly merge into traffic. If you missed it, you may want to read my post on merging.
2. Motorists who while driving in the HOV lane, see this lane appear and mistakenly change into this lane. You can identify this driver because once they realize the purpose of this lane, their right hand turn signal engages and they attempt re-occupy their former position. Usually a little red glow can be seen from the cabin of the vehicle and perhaps a little wave to the driver behind them.
3. Motorists who know exactly what this lane is for and are completely aware that this lane will end. They have been waiting for this opportunity and quickly maneuver their vehicle into this lane (usually no turn signal). This allows them to zoom ahead four or five car lengths and then perform the Anti Gore Point Slam. At this point Zoomer takes on a new moniker, that of Butthead. From this is derived the term Butthead Lane.

The crazy thing about all examples of this traffic behavior is that Zoomer and his progeny, Butthead, gain at the most 5 minutes every 60 miles of travel (an experienced guess here) in exchange for delaying hundreds (likely thousands) of fellow motorists to the same degree if not longer.

How does Zoomer sleep at night?

Don't drive angry! Drive weird!