Sunday, May 31, 2009

Honking will not change Newton's First Law of Motion

Newton's First Law of Motion, also known as the law of inertia, states that "Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed."(extracted from Wikipedia)

Although Sir Isaac Newton first published his most famous work on July 5th, 1687, it seems that people who live in the 21st century just don't know about the basic physics laws.

Having said that, imagine the following scene: you are driving your car and you see nothing more than a traffic light ahead that is turning to red. The natural action to take is to slow down your vehicle and stop right behind the crosswalk. Then you just wait patiently for the green light.

When the lights turn to green, some people insist on press FIRMLY their honkers immediately, imagining that the first driver in the row is blind AND maybe has some auditive problems. That is the only logical explanation that I can think about for someone honking so fast and so loud.

And I am not saying that the second or third car in the row does that. It is usually the fourth car in the row (or beyond) that thinks that the honker is a magical device that will make all cars disappear or make them move immediately just ignoring the fact that inertia DOES exist and that each system (person + car) has its own response time.

Why can't some drivers be more patient and calm? Is such reaction really necessary?! This kind of action really makes me angry.

The driver may accept the fact that:
  1. if he/she has an appointment, he/she shall plan to leave earlier according to the rush hour, weather problems and previously reported accidents in highways/freeways;
  2. if he/she did planned to leave earlier, he/she shall execute it as planned;
  3. if things didn't come out as planned, plan better next time.
  4. if some unexpected problem happens that make he/she to be late, I shall say that it is unexpected and one shall get used to Murphy's Law.
  5. as far as I know, blind people are not allowed to drive.
  6. honking or buzzing will not make the physics laws vanish from the Universe. It will only create more stress and certainly increase the entropy in the system generating more chaos.

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