TravelPalaver: Prisoner's Dilemma at the Baggage Claim

Air travel is stressful.  You rush to the airport; get stuck behind someone in the security line with lace-up boots; and then window-seat guy insists that you stand up immediately upon landing so he can get out, even though there's no room in the aisle so you both just stand there for seven minutes with your necks parallel to the floor.

But the most maddening thing to me is the anti-social behavior around the baggage claim.  This is particularly annoying on international flights, when people are often traveling in groups with enough luggage to make Lisa Douglas proud.  Instead of standing several feet back from the conveyor belt so that, when someone sees his luggage coming he can step forward, devil-may-care, and grasp it, people (and their Smarte Cartes) hunker down right up against the contraption, so that you wind up running around trying to find an opening to get to your suitcase before it passes by, feeling like someone in a movie  running along a railroad track waving goodbye to her sweetheart as the train carries him off to war.  It makes no sense.  If everyone would cooperate and stay back, everyone would benefit.  But as soon as one fool bellies up to the belt everyone else seems to feel they have to stake their ground there as well. It's sort of a variation of the prisoner's dilemma.

I was telling my older brother Dubliner that the solution to this would be for the airport authority to put a line around the perimeter of the conveyor belt and a sign reading STAND BEHIND THIS LINE.  Sure some scofflaws will ignore it, but just having the sign might appeal to enough travelers' better natures to keep the hovering to a minimum.

Dubliner proposed a slight modification, which my youngest brother, ColumbusBedhead, has illustrated below.  My third brother is an engineer, so if any airports are interested I'm sure he can work something up.  (I am a lawyer so if anyone makes a million dollars off this idea I will see you in court.)

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Comments

[Phil McTimoney]

Ah...but is there any more satisfying experience that plowing through a crowd of people, picking up a heavy suitcase, and then plowing back through the same crowd of people, leaving bodies scattered everywhere...all the while knowing that they won't say a word of protest because they KNOW they are standing in the wrong place?

And then...doing it all again for bag #2.

[Jabber]

I'm always impressed that it's the business guys with the least-heavy luggage who take front and center, leaving the old folks, people traveling with kids, and people with bags that weigh more than they do to struggle the heartiest. America at its finest.

[Dubliner]

I think I'll carry a cap and a whisle on future flights so that at baggage claim I can blow the whisle and announce, "Please step back two paces so that all of you can circle the conveyor belt and retrieve your bags without incident." The whisle and cap will provide the authority necessary to distinguish me from any other control freak on the verge of a nervous breakdown.