Legal Commentary

I quite enjoyed this little article in yesterday's New York Times Magazine on the age-old debate: when entering an exit lane on the freeway, are you a polite but angrily norm-enforcing "lineupper," or one of those damned "sidezoomers" who takes advantage of the empty line to cut in at the last minute? I could have done without the extremely annoying writing style, which takes far too much advantage of the vertical pronoun, but the subject itself is terrific.

For the record: I am a lineupper, and the dents on the side of my car attest to my willingness to defend my line against latecomers. Give me an uncrowded straightaway and I am more than happy to go extremely fast; but come exit time, my Canadian nature emerges fully fledged, with a bit of bite. Thus are our norms enforced.