Re: How does the mind work?
Ignorance with a dash of stupidity. They don't care that the signs and warnings are there (ignorance) because they think that they're lying. That being that they think whatever construction company set them up has already finished said work and just haven't removed the warnings yet (stupidity).
And perhaps a tiny bit of arrogance as well, for they think the construction is already done, assuming that they just happened to be there between the time of completion and removal of the signs, as though running into a genuinely incomplete project like that couldn't possibly happen to them (arrogance).
Re: How does the mind work?
People seem to forget for whatever reason that a car isn't just a device that you can use to get places, but it also is over 1,000kg of material. What gets me is when someone forgets their science lessons...
The road signs are there for a reason as are the traffic lights. Ignore them and you'll be forced to remember the laws of motion pretty quickly (Large heavy object is harder to stop than small light object, object in motion remains in motion until acted on by outside force, etc) as you wind up in collision or damage to your vehicle.
"Nobody is looking so I can get away with it". Nobody is looking so you'll be putting others, your $20,000 transport device and yourself on the line.
Re: How does the mind work?
Well myself having the experience, often, of Road signs and barrels blocking roadways for MILES before there is actually any "construction/workers" around - its probably the arrogance/ignorance/experience assumption.
Because 9 times out of 10 (at least in my state lol) the barrels and signs are set far and away from the actual "problem" area and you really CAN get around/get through etc. perfectly safely.
And people are lazy and want to go the shortest way possible they know, they don't want ot have to go around some other way.
Whenever in doubt, apply my forever rule 'People are Stupid. And they Suck." You can reverse it depending on the situation, int his case it starts with the "People are Stupid" part :).
(And I don't mean that as an insult to anyone, I include myself in "people" because I'm stupid and I suck too sometimes - its more of a philosophical observation after my 35 years that in the end, can really explain everything quite well when no other explanation works lol)
Re: How does the mind work?
You see this kind of thing everywhere IRL, not just on the road.
I see it in Retail (I'm sure you've read my Retail Customers Suck threads) all the time. Heck, every single time something is spilled on the floor (usually, because of customer suckiness), there has to be that idiot that wants to drive his shopping cart through whatever's on the floor (juice, soda, spaghetti sauce, whatever) and make wheel lines all over the floor and make a mess worse.
Or you finally mop everything up, and they wanna drive their carts into the wet floor area, and track it all up. I've even seen customers move the Wet Floor signs aside even though they were there for the express purpose of blocking them so they don't go down that aisle.
There was this time that I had a mop bucket sitting at one side of the aisle with the mop leaning over to the other, to block a 4 foot passageway between aisles (there's another way to get to the other aisle like 15 feet away) and I was standing right there and the customer proceeded to try and move the mop and bucket aside and I had to inform them that they are supposed to go around and he gives me this "WTF!?" look on his face.
Arrrrgh.
It all boils down to one (or more) of the four:
1). Stupidity.
2). Arrogance.
3). Self-Importance.
4). Impatience.
They think that they are Self-Important, more important than those road workers, or the people who have to re-mop the floor AGAIN, and they are impatient, because they feel that they just cannot take the extra time to go around the problem area.
