If you start slowing down sooner, there's a higher chance that the light will turn green before you're fully stopped. Then you can blast past the people stopped in the other lane.

Sometimes the opposite happens, though. The aggressive driver hits the light just before it turns yellow, and everyone who didn't drive like a hooligan had to stop. Depends on how well timed the lights are.

That said, people in general need to start coasting to a red light at least twice the distance away that they do. I've gotten passed by people where I'm coasting, there's a red light ahead, and there's no reason at all to hurry. Coming to a full stop is a waste of energy, and you should set yourself up to avoid needing to as much as possible.

Do you drive a BMW by chance?

Every time. I love watching them aggressively weave in and out of traffic, endangering everyone's safety on the road, only to take the exact same amount of time to get where they're going as the people driving the speed limit or slightly faster than the speed limit.

Entitlement is a disease.

I wish we had different classes of drivers licenses in the US for commercial cars. Like a Class 3 license could only allow people to legally drive basic cars (sedans, station wagons, minis, etc.), and to drive things like coupes, muscle cars, sports cars, and those kind of cars you need a Class 2, and to drive light trucks, SUVs, Jeeps, and Hummers, you need a Class 1 license.

I sorta think it would actually help with road rage and aggressive driving since it would at least require those kinds of people to actually demonstrate they can safely drive those kinds of cars.

i just like driving fast

I never know which lights I'll beat by driving faster and which ones I won't, but I know I'll beat a few.

I like timing it if possible to still be rolling when the light goes to green. Then you accelerate past the IHTBF still stopped for the light. Doesn’t happen often at all, gotta be nobody in front of you at the light and have the person who was shouldering their way through traffic stopped there. But satisfying when it does happen.

I mean, the point is usually not to get somewhere faster. But to not drive behind someone that infuriates you in some way.

And since they are still in front of you, it doesn't matter. They will still start moving before you.

Just gonna say that no one into cars that I know guns it from a red light because they think it'll get them anywhere faster. It's just because it makes us happy to do that. You're laughing at something we don't care about at all.

Even if you do care about that, it's not like gunning it never succeeds in getting you just past the next light before the red either.

Also, personally, it's much more comfortable to be at the front of the pack where I'm free to move, rather than being blocked in on all sides where my options to avoid an accident are constrained. This is honestly what I don't get the most about people who are part of rolling roadblocks. If an animal or person runs into the road ahead of you, you have literally nowhere to dodge besides braking and hoping.

I suspect that most speeding has nothing to do with being late, but with people being impatient and nasty

While I'm sure it feels good to cautious drivers when this happens, IME it doesn't happen enough for the amount of snarky memes posted about it. If it happens even 50% of the time, the other 50% aggressive drivers do get ahead.

I'm not an aggressive driver, and I see plenty of aggressive drivers I never catch up with.

I've been saying for a while now that this phenomenon needs one of those overly specific German words

ok i admit i have gone through an orange light to escape this specific scenario

it's the framerule in Mario Bros

Obligatory

So satisfying

I love making fun of asshole drivers because they chose to pollute and they're making life worse for all of us normal people.

Did this with a Subaru WRX driver yesterday. He still had temp tags. Probably was a good driver before he got that thing.