Interesting Study on HOV lanes

Apparently, they actually cause accidents (according to the study, a significant amount of them). I don't really have a well-defined opinion of HOV lanes. I am certainly in favor of helping the environment, but I'm not sure HOV lanes actually do that. I do know that the ones on the Virginia side of Washington, D.C. are completely assinine and they certainly don't improve the flow of traffic.

Bias Alert: I truly believe that whoever planned 95 South off 95/495 should be beaten and left in a ditch.

I say this because it always takes a ridiculous amount of time to get out of D.C. on 95 South through VA. In fact, I have noted, whenever there is a really high volume of traffic, they open up all the HOV lanes anyway. It seems to me that if HOV lanes actually worked, the reverse would be true. However, the HOV lanes themselves may not be the problem. The problem is that all the lanes seem to dump back down onto 95 anyway. This means that to exit, you have to re-merge onto the highway, and we all know that people don't know how to merge.

Anyway, there are probably some good, workable HOV lanes, but Virginia has never seen a good one - even the ones on 66 West suck. Is there a way to make these lanes work, or is it just another one of those ideas that sounds good and makes us feel better while not helping anything?

Hat Tip: Radley Balko

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