The usual story is that we are careless calculators. The better story is that we are careful about the wrong things. Economists have spent decades modelling luck as a quantity. It behaves more like a weather system. The strange thing about the slow lane is not that it exists but that it works, most of the time, for most people. The evidence here is thinner than the confident commentary suggests, and the honest position is a shrug with a direction of travel.
What the evidence shows
It is tempting to call this irrational. It is more useful to ask what it is for. The point is not that people are foolish. The point is that luck is expensive, and we economise on it like everything else. Put a number on luck and it becomes a target; put a target on it and the number stops meaning what it meant. If you want to see luck at work, watch a queue form where there is no reason for one.
The usual story is that we are careless calculators. The better story is that we are careful about the wrong things. The evidence here is thinner than the confident commentary suggests, and the honest position is a shrug with a direction of travel. The strange thing about the slow lane is not that it exists but that it works, most of the time, for most people. Notice how rarely anyone is argued out of the slow lane, and how often they are simply moved past it by a change in circumstance.
