“Avoid lanes with heavy trucks,” says Hani Mahmassani, a professor of transportation engineering at Northwestern University. Semis can’t accelerate quickly, a capability that contributes greatly to the smooth, efficient flow of vehicles. Stay away from the far-right lane, too, which is subject to a kind of friction caused by cars continually exiting and entering the freeway. You’re not necessarily in the wrong lane just because that Honda Accord you dusted a while back is now zipping past you. In fact, resist lane envy: Studies show that the perception that one lane is moving faster is often a psychological illusion.

When changing lanes, accelerate until you are going at least as fast as, if not faster than, any cars behind you. If you force the person behind you to brake when you merge, you’re generating what traffic theorists call a “shock wave.” Because humans have slow reaction times, the wave tends to amplify as it moves backward, each car braking later and harder than the one before it.

Many traffic jams are what are called “phantom jams” resulting less from external conditions, like road repairs, than a few drivers at the front who brake or are too clueless or stubborn to speed up or move over, thereby creating a clumping of cars behind them. Don’t be such a clotter. If you happen to be in a lane near the front of such a jam, it might benefit everyone if you can maneuver past these cars and open things up a bit. Remember that traffic behavior varies by country and culture. On Germany’s autobahn, for example, the leftmost lane is used almost exclusively for passing. In contrast, Mahmassani says, “Americans think they can drive in any lane they wish, at any speed they wish.”

Inside your car on a freeway, you are part of a collective system not unlike a swarm of ants or a flock of birds; as an individual, you have very little control. You may be in one lane and covet another; perhaps you’re the zigzagging type, going from left to right and back again, or you’re the one holding steadfast, cursing that lane weaver. In the end it just won’t matter that much. There’s a sort of equilibrium among lanes. “Sometimes,” Mahmassani says, “you just need to chill.”