I'm sure that people do know, but selfishness drives (pun not intended) people to do it. When there was a horrible freeze down here a few years back, traffic became gridlocked. Yes, the lack of traction caused issue, but the main problem was that everyone was hellbent on getting home without regard to how the flow of traffic normally works.
I witnessed gridlock happen. At a particularly odd, 6-way intersection, people started edging the cars into the intersections. The light would change, cross traffic would get pissed, and then they'd edge around the blocking traffic creating a snaked grid. As cars moved out the way in the cross, the other section would block more and more until the whole intersection was blocked. It was a beautiful tragedy of bucket crabs[0] stopping progress for all. That's when I pulled into a nearby lot, called a friend, and just crashed with them for the night.
I witnessed gridlock happen. At a particularly odd, 6-way intersection, people started edging the cars into the intersections. The light would change, cross traffic would get pissed, and then they'd edge around the blocking traffic creating a snaked grid. As cars moved out the way in the cross, the other section would block more and more until the whole intersection was blocked. It was a beautiful tragedy of bucket crabs[0] stopping progress for all. That's when I pulled into a nearby lot, called a friend, and just crashed with them for the night.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality