There is a traffic circle in front of Grasshopper's school.  The purpose is for dropping off kids without having to park.  You just drive up and stop in front of the school.  Your kid gets out, you complete the circle, and leave in an orderly fashion.  There are two lanes.  The one on the outside is for parking, the one on the inside is for you to pull into when you want to drive out of the circle.

Simple.  Efficient...

And a complete clusterfuck.

For the several years that I've had kids in that school there's always been THOSE PEOPLE.  The ones who drive past the parking lot, where they are supposed to park, pull up into the traffic circle; and park.  They get out, walk their kid into the school, visit with the teacher, run into someone they know and discuss the weather, use the bathroom…whatever…and leave their damned vehicle parked in the middle of the drop-off zone.

All this to avoid walking a few extra feet.  They turn what should be a really sweet, efficient system into a rat's nest, as people try to drive around the parked vehicle, and nearly crash into people in the driving lane, and EVERYONE ends up in grid-lock.

Worse, the chaos spreads out into the public streets, as traffic backs up and people can't even get near the school and decide not to wait.  Impatient moms and dads in a rush to drop their kids and get off to work unload their children onto the sidewalk.  Those kids then have to use the crossing guards to get across the intersection.  The crossing guards then have to stop traffic  in the streets leading to the school to get the kids across – causing traffic to back up to the intersections a block away from the school.

This affects people who don't even have kids, as impatient people who have waited in line to just get to the intersection decide they won't wait their proper turn at the four-way stop, causing more grid-lock.

Recently, the school posted two guys out on the traffic circle to make these assholes get back in their cars and keep driving.  For about three weeks straight, they enforced proper traffic circle etiquette.  Traffic not only cleared up and got more efficient, it got more polite.

People at the intersection of the street and the school's traffic circle began to realize that they had to let people OUT of the traffic circle onto the street in order for there to be room for them to pull in…so they stopped pulling into the intersection (effectively blocking the path of people leaving and causing gridlock).

The effect is noticeable for at least three blocks around the school during rush hour.

There has been no need for any enforcement now for a month.

My observation is:  Enlightened Self Interest works, as long as there aren't too many selfish jerks who gum up the system.  When people realize that what is good for other people is also good for them, they do what is good for everyone willingly and cheerfully.  When they see that other people get to break the rules, while they themselves are expected to follow them, they stop playing, and everyone suffers.

So the school did the right thing.  They found the source of the problem (the few cheaters) and called them on their behavior.  I didn't even require any sort of "punishment"...just having their behavior pointed out to them, and a request to correct it was enough.

They didn't have to do away with the service of the traffic circle.  They didn't have to reduce the number of people using it.  They didn't have to punish all of the people who were breaking the rules simply to try to function in a broken system...

...all they had to do was temporarily perform a small corrective function to the behavior of the few people who were breaking the system and all the other violators went back to civil behavior in a system that worked properly for the benefit of everyone.