A queue of cars, an empty lane and a simple question about the way we behave — not just on the road, but in business.

I had one of those small moments recently that got me thinking. I was approaching a roundabout on a two-lane stretch of road. The left-hand lane was full of traffic, cars queueing one behind another. The right-hand lane was completely empty. There was nothing preventing drivers from using it. You could legitimately continue over the roundabout from that lane and get where you were going considerably quicker. So why was almost everyone sitting in the queue? It prompted a deliberately provocative thought: Does traffic sometimes exist because people actually choose to be in traffic?

Do we always want the quickest route?

Clearly, nobody is going to complete a questionnaire saying:

“I deliberately chose the slower route because I didn’t particularly want to get to work any earlier.”

And I’m certainly not suggesting that explains every traffic jam. But I’d be fascinated to see the data held by Google Maps, Waze, TomTom and others showing how frequently drivers reject a quicker alternative and remain on the route they’re already travelling. Because research into driver behaviour suggests something interesting: we don’t always choose the objectively quickest option. In one driving study¹, drivers were offered an alternative route that would save them five minutes. Despite that, around half remained on the major route they were already using. Even when the alternative offered a 15-minute advantage, the major route was still selected in around a third of the tests. The researchers concluded that travel time wasn’t the only thing influencing behaviour. Previous experience, familiarity and trust in the information also mattered. Perhaps even more interestingly, the research compared what drivers said they would do in a questionnaire with what they actually did in a driving simulator — and found significant differences between stated intentions and actual choices. In other words, human beings aren’t simply calculating machines constantly selecting the mathematically optimum route. We have preferences, habits and a liking for certainty. We tend to trust what we already know.

And then there’s the sat-nav paradox

There’s another fascinating dimension to this. A 2026 study published in Nature Communications² modelled the impact of navigation services including Google Maps, TomTom, Bing Maps and Mapbox across Florence, Milan and Rome. As more drivers followed algorithmically recommended routes, traffic became increasingly concentrated onto the same roads. At full adoption, route diversity fell by as much as 14%. Think about that. Technology designed to help each of us find an optimum route can, collectively, encourage more of us to use the same routes. So we potentially have two competing behaviours at work: sometimes we ignore the alternative because we prefer the familiar route; at other times we follow the technology and find ourselves following everyone else who’s been given the same advice. Either way, there’s an interesting tendency towards conformity.

What has any of this got to do with business?

Quite a lot, I think. How many businesses are sitting in the left-hand lane? Everyone in their industry does something a particular way, so they do it too. They use the same processes, attend the same exhibitions, recruit in the same way, market through the same channels and structure their businesses in broadly the same way. “That’s how our industry works.” And then we complain about the traffic: growth is difficult, recruitment is difficult, people aren’t engaging, marketing isn’t working, margins are being squeezed and there aren’t enough hours in the day. Perhaps sometimes those things are true. But perhaps occasionally there’s an empty lane immediately beside us that we’ve simply stopped noticing.

Familiarity can be incredibly powerful

The familiar route feels safer. If I do what everyone else does and it doesn’t work, there’s comfort in knowing everyone had the same problem. If I take the empty lane and I’m wrong, that decision belongs to me. That’s an important distinction in leadership. Following convention distributes responsibility. Challenging convention concentrates it. Perhaps that’s one reason genuinely different thinking is harder than businesses sometimes pretend it is. We all like to talk about innovation, disruption and challenging the status quo, but pulling into the empty lane requires us to do something different from everyone immediately around us. That can feel uncomfortable.

Are we optimising for the wrong thing?

Of course, the quickest route isn’t necessarily everyone’s preferred route. A driver may choose a familiar journey because it’s easier, less stressful or more predictable. They may prefer a slightly longer journey with fewer difficult junctions. Those can be perfectly rational choices. Business is the same. Efficiency isn’t everything. But the important thing is surely to understand why we’re making the choice. There’s a huge difference between “I’ve considered the alternatives and this is the best route for us” and “This is the route we’ve always taken.” One is a decision. The other is a habit. And habits have an extraordinary ability to disguise themselves as decisions.

Maybe traffic isn’t the problem

I don’t seriously believe that most commuters consciously want to spend longer getting to work — although I wouldn’t completely discount the possibility that an unexpected traffic jam occasionally provides a rather convenient explanation for arriving ten minutes later! The more interesting point is what our behaviour on the road reveals about us. We’re influenced by familiarity, other people’s behaviour, technology and perceived risk. Sometimes we’ll remain in a queue even when an alternative is sitting right beside us. So perhaps the question for business leaders isn’t simply: “How do we get through the traffic faster?”

Perhaps it’s: “Why are we in this lane in the first place?”

Next time something in your organisation feels slow, congested or unnecessarily difficult, look sideways. There might just be an empty lane. And perhaps that’s one of the most valuable things a strong business community can provide: people who challenge your route, question the familiar and help you see alternatives you might otherwise drive straight past. That’s very much what we’re trying to create at B4.

If you’d like your thinking challenged, your perspective widened and perhaps some help finding the empty lane, come and join us at a B4 event. You’ll meet business leaders who aren’t afraid to question the route everyone else is taking.

Sometimes the best way forward starts with asking why everyone is queueing in the first place.

Sources & further reading

1. Ardeshiri, A., Jeihani, M. & Peeta, S. (2015), “Driving simulator-based study of compliance behaviour with dynamic message sign route guidance”, IET Intelligent Transport Systems.
The research combined a high-fidelity driving simulator with a stated-preference survey involving more than 100 participants. It found evidence of inertia and anchoring in route choice: when an alternative route was five minutes faster, around half of drivers still remained with the major route; even with a 15-minute saving available, the major route was selected in around one-third of tests. The study also found significant differences between stated preferences and choices made in the simulator. DOI: 10.1049/iet-its.2014.0164.

2. Cornacchia, G., Nanni, M., Pedreschi, D. et al. (2026), “The traffic concentration effects of urban navigation services”, Nature Communications, 17, 8548.
The study modelled navigation-service adoption across Florence, Milan and Rome using GPS mobility data and recommendations from Bing Maps, Google Maps, Mapbox and TomTom. At full adoption, route diversity fell by up to approximately 14%, demonstrating how widespread use of navigation technology can concentrate vehicles onto a smaller number of roads. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-75254-8.

The figures in reference 1 are directly supported by the published results: 50% compliance when the alternative was five minutes faster and 65% compliance when it was 15 minutes faster. The authors explicitly describe this as evidence of drivers being “anchored” to the major route. (IET)

And reference 2 is very current — published in Nature Communications on 11 July 2026 — with the 14% figure coming directly from the authors’ results. (Nature)

I think having those two proper academic references at the bottom makes the B4 article considerably stronger without making the body feel academic.