
Smeed's law - nice1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smeed%27s_law
======
jjs
I think that people in low-population areas often drive more recklessly
because they assume that nobody else will be on the road, and they're usually
right. (And they tend to have a larger distance to go to get to anything
interesting).

------
pavel_lishin
Have we invented psychohistory yet?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)>

------
pj
Dyson's quote said, "Smeed interpreted his law as a law of human nature."

If this is true, then this formula should appear outside the world of driving.
Has it been applied anywhere else? I did a quick search and found nothing.

I wonder if it applies to flying, rail travel, employment related fatalities,
medical related fatalities, etc...

------
supahfly_remix
interesting...I wonder if there is a similar law for Internet traffic. Is the
overall network congestion is determined by the amount of "sluggishess"
(appropriately defined) that the average user experiences?

~~~
albertcardona
Back in the dialup days, waiting for a web page to load for over 1 minute was
about it. More than that, and one would either move on or treat the medium
different: for example, instead of interacting with the webpage, one would set
it to load and go do something else, and come back later. Or give up. There
was an alternative, though: going down to the internet cafe to get fast
access.

The existence of the alternative affected one's perception of the "slowness",
just as being stuck in traffic in LA made me wish for a proper subway system.

No quantification, just anecdotal observations.

