(whining) (laughing)
- [Andrew] There are two types of drivers during rush hour.
Ones that put on a podcast.
(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to
The Upgrade.
- [Andrew] And commit to a lane.
Others that swerve through traffic maniacally.
- This is just the on ramp.
It's so bad.
- [Andrew] Who's gonna get to their destination first?
Let's find out.
(upbeat music)
- I've been driving in LA since I was 15 years old.
I am hard wired to change lanes
whenever humanly possible.
But my friend and colleague Andrew
tells me that I'm going no where fast.
- It may look like you're making progress
more quickly if you're aggressively slicing
and dicing through traffic,
but in the long term, it does not pay off.
- Yeah, I still don't think you're right.
- When cars in a given lane are in traffic
going slower, they bunch together,
just like bumper to bumper traffic.
Cars in another lane that are going faster
will be more spread apart.
This makes the car that's in a lane
that's going faster pass a bunch of cars
so quickly that they don't realize
how many cars they've passed.
However, this makes the car in the slow lane
wanna switch even though they might be
in a faster lane overall.
The car that's stuck in the slow lane
can woefully count each and every car that's passing them.
My hypothesis is that if I stay slow
and you go hardcore, cut through as much as you can,
I'm not gonna get to lunch much later than you.
Maybe a minute tops.
- I'm skeptical.
I still think I'm gonna get there faster if I swerve.
So let's see.
- Nice ride.
- [Tahsin] So we decided to test this
for ourselves at 9:32 a.m.
In LA on the 405.
- We're using a stretch of 12 miles
between the suburbs and the city in rush hour traffic.
Tahsin will be the lane changer
while I will commit to a center lane.
Our destination is a taco joint.
This is, oh god no, no.
(laughing)
Is this what the normals who live in LA actually deal with?
Oh I see Tahsin.
Oh, she is way far back.
How? It makes no sense.
- This is the worst.
I literally feel like every lane
is going faster than I am.
This is exactly what he was talking about.
When a car is passing you,
you can count them one by one
and it's so painful.
But when you pass a car,
it goes so fast, like it's very unsatisfying. (laughing)
This is the worst.
He's already in front of me.
- Groove?
I mean, I'm not saying you always have to
take the past of least resistance,
but more often than not,
it gets you where you're going
and with a lot less sweat.
- Oh my god, I think that's him.
Oh yeah.
I finally got in front of him.
Yeah, eat my dust, Andrew.
Here we go oh.
And I'm here first.
It is 10:02.
I beat him, I beat him.
Now I just don't know by how much.
(laughing)
And he's clocking in at 10:04.
- [Andrew] Hello.
- Two minutes.
- That's it?
So we're at Tito's.
I do owe Tahsin a couple tacos,
but what we learned is it's not really worth it
to drive hard, is it?
No, no.
- I beat you only by like a minute and 40 seconds
and it was not worth it, I did not enjoy my drive.
I was very stressed out.
- The sloth life is the way.
And now I think I do owe you some tacos though.
- Yes, you still do owe me a taco
but you're right and I will change my ways.
(laughing)