Bitter about traffic

The one thing I will not miss when I leave this area is the nasty traffic congestions we have. It normally takes me about 40 minutes to get home from work, via a 15 mile route that Mapquest claims should only take 22 minutes. The traffic backup last night was the worst I have ever seen, it took me an entire hour.  

The culprit was a two-car pile up on the right lane, which forced motorists on the right lane to divert to the middle lane and created a back-up for miles. This leads me to something that I have often wondered about - the cost to our society of reckless drivers who cause accidents and the lack of an adequate system by which we can efficiently make these drivers pay for the damage they've cost. If I operate my vehicle irresponsibly, there are mechanisms (ie police, courts, insurance company) by which I can be made to pay for the damages done to the owner(s) of the vehicle(s) I have damaged. But what about all the hundreds (and if you're talking about rush hour in a city, maybe thousands) of motorists on the road that end up having to spend an extra half an hour on the road because of the havoc I have caused?  

Hence we have is a breakdown in the marketplace caused by not making drivers completely liable for the harm they cause in traffic accidents. Imagine a guest staying at your house, running up your phone bill with calls to foreign countries and 900 numbers, yet when the bill comes he is only liable for half of the charges. By not making him fully pay for the charges, you are not giving him the proper incentives to keep the cost down. Unfortunately, the situation with traffic is not as easy to solve as simply making the guest pay for the entire phone call. One solution is to use technologies such as GPS devices in vehicles to allow drivers who were delayed to file a claim against drivers who cause accidents.  We can penalize the drivers at fault by having them compensate other drivers at a rate equivalent to the federal minimum wage. However, such a solution raises privacy concerns and may be too cumbersome to implement. Another solution is to raise the cost of auto insurance, which will disproportionately punish bad drivers.  

Or you can do what I do, and move down to Carolina.