Is it ethical for me to take a shortcut that involves leaving an expressway a few miles before an overcrowded bridge and taking local roads only to re-enter the expressway just before the bridge. I have observed that much of the slowdown at this bridge is caused by merging traffic coming from this shortcut.

The expressions "Free Rider" and "Easy Rider" both fit nicely with this cute example. I'm not convinced (yet) that it is not a moral question. When I refrain from making that automotive move--or when I give in to temptation, and do it--I feel my moral sense at work. I'm a cheater, or I rose above the base human urge to cheat. I suspect that utilitarians, deontologists of various stripes, and virtue-ethicists all would have something to say, or pontificate, about it. Jan Narveson, by the way, would say (has said) that the fact that we have such crowded highways is a sign that our lives are getting better (and not, say, environmentally worse). Update February 14, 2006: I took a passenger van from O'Hare airport in Chicago to a hotel in the Loop last Thursday. The cars on I-90 were crawling up each other's tailpipes. My driver scooted off the interstate at an obscure exit, zipped through the intersection (the light was green), and dove right back in on the other side. When I got out of the van at...