If game theory were a mandatory part of driver training

Driving home tonight, the traffic ground to a halt (again) near the ringroad intersection where all the muth*$&$^&*# drivers try to push in front of eachother - another traffic mess of rubics-cube-esque complexity. The lights were out because it had been raining all day, and the cops were off taking care of more lucrative problems, and so we all just sat there and waited for the mess to sort itself out for an hour. Imagine a hundred children in a playground being given a single knotted piece of string and being told that the one to undo the knot got a lifetime of lollies. Well such was the approach to undoing the traffic knot - a car melee.

I wonder sometimes if the mandatory teaching of game theory in Indian driving schools might help. Everyone would identify this as a collective action problem. All drivers are seeking the payoff of a quick ride home. But they also know that if they can successfully circumvent the traffic order, their payoff will be bigger - they'll get home even earlier. The bit they miss is that if everybody tries to circumvent, everybody loses! No payoff! We all get home later than if everyone patiently let things flow. So, a collective action problem solvable only by the creation of a higher order authority (the absent traffic cop) and enforcable penalties for circumventers (a whack with the long stick some cops carry around).

But I digress. For the time being, the ringroad disaster is my chance to ringfriends.