The gravity of the situation

Being that trucks are hit as an approximate rule, when parked on the side of a road, and vehicles seem to be speeding most when alone, as if pursuing other vehicles—merely to slow down together while getting in pile ups, etc.—and nobody seems to learn from that (including many who are trained specifically to keep a distance). I've been thinking it may be a cosmic force causing this, like an aspect of gravity, perhaps. Looking up how gravitational attraction is described, I'd say it's likely to be a reasonable explanation for why traffic behaves the way it does. "Reasonable" in the sense that our behavior defaults to collisions, no matter what is on our minds, unless we pay particular attention to avoiding or preventing them; it happens "naturally" in other words, and is more likely to happen with larger vehicles in any area (not simply because they take up more space, but that they have a greater gravitational pull).

"For most applications, gravity is well approximated by Newton's law of universal gravitation, which describes gravity as a force which causes any two bodies to be attracted to each other...

Newton's law of universal gravitation states that every particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.

In today's language, the law states that every point mass attracts every other point mass by a force acting along the line intersecting the two points. The force is proportional to the product of the two masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Newton's law has since been superseded by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, but it continues to be used as an excellent approximation of the effects of gravity in most applications. Relativity is required only when there is a need for extreme accuracy, or when dealing with very strong gravitational fields, such as those found near extremely massive and dense objects, or at very close distances (such as Mercury's orbit around the Sun)."

What's unreasonable is how this is still not widely understood, since our behavior is generally oblivious to the law(s) of gravity on the roads, etc. So I think it should be emphasized as a rule of thumb to go by for being reasonably cautious, at least. Do you realize the gravity of the situation?

 

Why? It's the same as discussing accidents as the result of whatever else, like being distracted (but I think there's another side to that story). People here have mentioned the attraction to lights also, which makes drunk drivers more likely to hit police vehicles for example. Natural phenomena certainly have something to do with it, especially when people don't want to think about it.

 

Well, people even do that to me in parking lots (like it's another pastime). The other day I parked at a Target (in a personal vehicle). Made it a point to park far away from the store entrance, but near the parking lot entrance (so I could use the sidewalk), and this was on a stormy day, where not a single vehicle had the inclination to park prior to that. Fifteen minutes later, I walk out of the store, and there are at least five cars parked in the immediate vicinity of mine, as if it were a magnet (happens all the time—like the vehicle that always parks in the way of a truck, which is about to back up in a lot, even though it's out of their way to park there). I guess that if people would ordinarily have something better to do, like parking closer to a store, the gravitational pull of my vehicle near the entrance of the lot sucks them in. Maybe when others get tired, or are paying less attention, this force of gravity actually turns their steering wheels toward any vehicle parked on the roadside!

 

I think there are often human factors (like the herd mentality), in addition to gravitational attractions, although I'd say the pull of gravity always gets that ball rolling (and then people are like "while I'm here")... so it seems to influence their decisions, also. Gravity happens universally, which might be underestimated (as the cause and effect, in seemingly trivial or otherwise subjective situations). Who wants to herd a parked car?

Hypothetically, gravity is a more objective explanation to me, since I've been trying to avoid people or moving things as a rule; I don't think everyone has a chip on their shoulder, just because it seems that they're going out of their way to interfere with my personal space or direction of movement (or that of my random vehicle), and I'd like to think they default to gravitating toward whatever's there, without thinking about it (besides that predators may chase after what's running away, but not parked cars, or trucks on the shoulder etc., so the lack of a particular mentality still puts people on a collision course). Whereas, the herd mentality should have them parking near the crowd, and close to the store (in that scenario). By the way, at a Walmart parking lot, with multiple entrances all around it, the other vehicles don't tend to gather around mine, when it's parked by itself and far from the store entrance (so it mostly seems to depend on how close they are to it on the way in).

I can be sure of one thing though. They're not trying to avoid me on the road, especially when it would be in their best interest (like when I'm in a massive vehicle that can demolish them in one second). That's a fact, which is all I really need to know about their judgment, to want to avoid them in the first place. Not only do they practice gravitating toward everything else, but they don't have the reflexes to do the opposite (because it would have to be anticipated by more than one second, and the same accidents keep happening all over the place, when it isn't). I simply think they don't realize the gravity of the situation (and then may get upset, if not hurt, for thinking about it too subjectively).