The lane next to you is more likely to be slower than yours

Saw this link on Hacker News the other day: The Highway Lane Next to Yours Isn’t Really Moving Any Faster The article describes a phenomenon unique to traffic where cars spread out when they go fast and get more compact when they go slow. That’s supposedly the explanation. There’s a much simpler explanation that works for any queue. Let’s consider a supermarket checkout with two lines. One of them has a slow worker and will take 10 minutes. The other one has a fast worker and will take 5 minutes...

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