[maest]

> I try to grab an outside shopping cart to leave the world slightly less chaotic than when I entered; which is all we can do in life, perhaps

I lived in several European countries for many years. I then moved to the US a few years ago.

The US strikes me as a less civilised country, in the sense that people, on average don't return the shopping cart. In the first year after I moved, I kept returning the shopping cart, but, after seeing many others not do it, I stopped. I stopped even though I agree it is the right thing to do because I felt like a fool every time I did it. Other people decided their time is too important to return the cart, so why should I be the sucker who does it?

This isn't the only example of uncivilised behaviour I've noticed in the US. Here are other examples: bypassing a long queue of cars only to merge into the lane at the last possible second, skipping red lights if no cars are around, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk and forcing other to walk around me, not saying "you're welcome", not giving up my seat on public transportation to e.g. old people, littering.

Every time I see someone break these markers of civilised society, makes me less likely to abide by them next time.

[throwaway173738]

> bypassing a long queue of cars only to merge into the lane at the last possible second,

If everyone did this the jams would flow faster, according to WSDOT.

[c22]

This is true, but with a few caveats:

* The time spent adjacent to the traffic lane should be used calibrating your speed with the speed of traffic, once you're at the front you should then be able to merge into an open spot without causing any change to the speed of the cars behind you. So many times I see people zip quickly to the front then merge in and slam on their brakes, causing an extra delay to ripple back through traffic. Some people do this at the beginning of the merge lane which is even worse.

* Once you get there you should endeavor to zipper merge so multiple cars aren't trying to squeeze into one spot. As a corollary, if you're already in the lane that's being merged into you should leave an open space big enough for one vehicle to enter at this point, or better yet consider leaving the lane entirely.

* And by that I mean leave the lane to move deeper into the highway, don't exit into the merging lane just to zip ahead and cut back in, this decidedly does not improve traffic flows.

[maest]

From what I can see, it's not about higher throughput (which stays the same)

It's about reducing queue length (you use 2 lanes instead of one, so the queue length is halved) and smaller speed differences between cars on adjacent lanes.

I can't find a good WSDOT source, but here's Minesotta: https://www.dot.state.mn.us/trafficeng/workzone/doc/When-lat...

Anyway, I'm not talking about cases where one lane is closed (which is what WSDOT and the Minesotta doc talk about). I'm talking about cases where there is a one lane offroad from the highway, with a queue of cars waiting to take it. Plenty of people will skip the entire queue and try to merge right at the end, blocking half of their own lane while waiting for a gap in the queue.

[verall]

If there is a right turn only lane, and a straight lane, and the right turn only lane is backed up with people queuing, you are not making traffic go faster by merging in at the last second. You are slowing down a bunch of people trying to turn, and blocking the people trying to go straight.

You can change straight/right/left here and it all holds. Zipper merges are for merges, when 2 lanes of traffic become one, and everyone merging early is a little bit worse. Above is just selfish.

[watwut]

You should not do jams with opposite direction lanes. I assume op talked about that.

[tqi]

> so why should I be the sucker who does it?

Because it's the right thing to do.

[1718627440]

Yeah, as someone living in Germany, returning shopping carts sounds like a non-issue. The only case where people don't return shopping carts are homeless people, who use it to store there personal belongings. So it's deliberate and they do not litter the world with shopping carts, but actively use them.

[sokka_h2otribe]

So, I see 2-5 carts in the lot, and a few hundred people in the store.

You maybe are making yourself part of the 1% who don't return their cart (or my locale is better than average at returning it)

[triceratops]

> I stopped even though I agree it is the right thing to do because I felt like a fool every time I did it... why should I be the sucker who does it?

You really are a fool. Who willingly gives up the chance to get some free exercise and feel morally superior? I'm over here happily returning others' shopping carts, not just my own, and basking in the knowledge of how I'm a better human being than you maest.

[JohnBooty]

    people, on average don't return the shopping cart

Perhaps I'm reading this too literally, but "on average?" This is a very flawed society, but I don't think I've ever seen the rando stranded carts equalling or outnumbering the returned ones.

I'm nearly 50 and have been to many, many parking lots including some truly forsaken ones. The parking lot at the Walmart near me is a travesty. People dump trash on the ground there, and I don't mean simple littering. It's so gross. It makes you feel like society is crumbling and that civilization was perhaps a mistake in the first place.

And yet...

I just returned from a quick trip there several minutes ago. I naturally thought of this thread (because I'm insane) while traversing the parking lot. I counted four unreturned carts, and several dozen properly corralled carts. The ratio was at least 10:1, possibly more.

This isn't "my" Walmart, but here's one near me that's notorious for being a bit of a Mad Max situation. If you switch to satellite view, you can see that even here the coralled carts seem to greatly outnumber the stranded ones.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/uWE4wfydda7KtT2W8

    bypassing a long queue of cars only to merge into the lane 
    at the last possible second

While again not doubting that US is worse than many other countries, I wonder if some amount of this is due to our uh, organically sprawling road system. Because I have definitely been one of the people doing this at times, but it was always due to quite honestly misunderstanding what lane I needed to be in.

Anecdotally I've heard that our drivers are nowhere near the worst, but I don't have firsthand experience.

[fy20]

Does it have anything to do with US parking lots being huge? I usually ship at Lidl, so the parking lot can hold maybe 50 cars. It takes 1 minute to return the cart, and there's usually a car parked next to me, so there isn't actually space to leave it (unless I'm an asshole and leave it in front of another car).

[JohnBooty]

When there are large parking lots, there are multiple cart return areas scattered throughout the lot. Otherwise things would be really inefficient, to an even more nightmarish (and money-costing) degree.

Not sure if you're from the US, but the problem is objectively not as bad here as people say. If you look at various Walmarts (usually these are reliably some of the worst parking lots in any given area) in Google Maps (switch to satellite view) the reality is that the vast majority of people here actually do return their carts properly.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/uWE4wfydda7KtT2W8

https://maps.app.goo.gl/rCBrJKebU33rMq8J6

https://maps.app.goo.gl/5o4GksqTGahBkU816

The last one is by far the worst one I found.

[shiroiuma]

America is very big and diverse, and local culture varies wildly. You can go to a Whole Foods store in one part of a city and almost everyone returns their carts there, and then you can go to a Walmart in another part of the city and it looks like something out of a zombie movie, with carts and trash littering the parking lot.