# Can someone explain this driving mentality to me? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 10, 2010, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846 "2010-08-10T17:37:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/21 "2010-08-10T18:59:37Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > You don’t recall seeing people use all the lanes up to the merge point? Or, you don’t see the alternate merge at the end? I don’t recall seeing the alternating merge at the end, nor any other effort to sacrifice a fraction of one’s own second to make anyone else’s life easier. I recall allowing drivers in the New York area to merge in front of me, and feeling like a rube, because I was literally the only driver in sight doing so. Granted, I’ve only spent a couple months’ worth of days, total in my life, driving in the vicinity of these cities. But that was enough to solidify my impression of New York-Boston as the very axis of bad driving behavior (New York the pole of inconsideration, Boston the pole of cluelessness). ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/22 "2010-08-10T19:02:01Z")
Well, all I can say is that I’ve employed the technique I describe above (in Washington DC regional commuter traffic, another notorious headache), and even I was surprised at how _visibly_ the situation improved. > [@RitterSport](#): > > If someone decides to merge at point A, while others are deciding to merge at various points B, C, and D behind him, you can end up stopping both lanes. In other words, I’m at point B and decide it’s time to merge, but the traffic upfront has slowed to let in the person at point A. Now, the traffic around me slows even more, possibly stops. The person at point C is now stuck between two lanes, leaving empty space in the closing lane, which is less efficient still. The person at point D also stops to merge in, now we have two stopped lanes, empty space in the closing lane, just an awful commute for all. Good merging, by definition, doesn’t involve any stopping. In the situation I’m thinking of, the only _stopping_, at all, was occurring ahead of me, at the point where the one lane actually disappeared and people were forced to stop, and anyone nice enough to let _stopped_ drivers in had to stop as well. Once the rolling merge was in place, the stops ahead eased off, because we had killed the pressure of further assholes trying to race ahead in the disappearing lane, and no stops occurred behind us (until we and our immediate followers were through, of course, and the whole situation reverted). ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/23 "2010-08-10T19:02:30Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > > [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > > > Something very American is at work here: the idea that breaking the rules is unfair even when the rules _themselves_ are unfair. > > > > Americans, however much of a hurry we may be in, will gladly slow things down for ourselves _and_ everybody around us before we’ll forgive _even the appearance_ of breaking the rule about Everybody In The Same Goddam Lane, Head Down, Eyes Front, and Shut Yer Mouth. > > > > Zipper merging European-style does not even enter into the realm of possibility for most of us. That level of cooperation is _not_ “courteous,” probably because it doesn’t bring people _down_ to a common level in the fine and humble Christian way. Instead it allows people to help each other _up_ to a new level - faster merging, in this case. That’s distressingly namby-pamby behavior, if it isn’t outright communistic. > > IMO, it’s because most Europeans live in more crowded areas with smaller roads and have learned their lesson. Most of America has huge, wide highways and don’t know any better. Drive around Boston, Chicago, or New York and you’ll see people properly zipper merging. Boston, Chicago, and New York are also major urban areas with disproportionate numbers of lefties, eggheads, atheists, deviants, and people who take our freedoms in perverse and unnatural ways. It all begins to come together, now, doesn’t it? _(pounds table; laughs diabolically)_ ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/24 "2010-08-10T19:12:57Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > Well, all I can say is that I’ve employed the technique I describe above (in Washington DC regional commuter traffic, another notorious headache), and even I was surprised at how _visibly_ the situation improved. > > Good merging, by definition, doesn’t involve any stopping. > > In the situation I’m thinking of, the only _stopping_, at all, was occurring ahead of me, at the point where the one lane actually disappeared and people were forced to stop, and anyone nice enough to let _stopped_ drivers in had to stop as well. > > Once the rolling merge was in place, the stops ahead eased off, because we had killed the pressure of further assholes trying to race ahead in the disappearing lane, and no stops occurred behind us (until we and our immediate followers were through, of course, and the whole situation reverted). The only way to ensure that there is a rolling merge and no stopping is to agree to merge at a single point. Absent some sort of hive mind, that point has to be at or very near the end of the closing road. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/25 "2010-08-10T19:29:09Z")
While we’re on the subject, you know how sometimes you’re in stop-and-go traffic and someone decides to “even it out” by going slower and letting a gap open up? STOP IT! In principle, your technique should work. But it could only work if you knew what the average speed was and travelled at it. But you don’t. If you guess too high, you’d run out of space too soon and hit the guy in front of you. So you have two choices: close in on the guy and _then_ abruptly hit your brakes, exacerbating the problem you were trying to eliminate, or guess a speed slower than the average speed, which is a problem for even more obvious reasons. You’re not a computer. You can’t calculate the average speed accurately enough. Just give up and do the stop-and-go like the rest of us, OK? ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/26 "2010-08-10T19:30:13Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > [ > > The only way to ensure that there is a rolling merge and no stopping is to agree to merge at a single point. Absent some sort of hive mind, that point has to be at or very near the end of the closing road. That is demonstrably wrong. I’ve merged and been merged by others WAY before the last possible merge point. Stopping did not generally happen in those cases. Here is the REAL problem IMO. In a perfect world, everybody co-operatively merges at the last minute (which would minimize everyones time delay). But what happens in practice is that there are plenty of assholes that see this only as a chance to pass others then merge at the last minute causing the problems mentioned in the OP. BUTTT, if most people instead decided to merge at the last minute, those same assholes would be in the primary lane refusing (to the best of their abilities) to allow people from the other lanes to merge at the last minute, cause the same problem in the OP, except in this case its the assholes in the moving lane and the victims trying to get in. Its really not which system you use, its more what fraction of uncooperative assholes you have. If its past some small but critical amount everybody gets screwed. ---
**Author:** ![Drain\_Bead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e47774/32.png) [@Drain\_Bead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drain_Bead)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/27 "2010-08-10T19:37:02Z")
BTW, this may not have been clear judging from the responses, but this is a case of three lanes going down to two, not two going down to one. So there are still two lanes of traffic that people can get into, and it’s the people who refuse to get out of the fast lane at any costs who are causing the backup. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/28 "2010-08-10T20:02:20Z")
The real problem is annoyed drivers who slow down to gawk at the people zipping by in the soon-to-be-closed lane. [QUOTE=spark240] Granted, I’ve only spent a couple months’ worth of days, total in my life, driving in the vicinity of these cities. But that was enough to solidify my impression of New York-Boston as the very axis of bad driving behavior (New York the pole of inconsideration, Boston the pole of cluelessness). [/QUOTE] That’s unfair. Boston drivers are very nearly as rude as New York drivers. ---
**Author:** ![Al\_Bundy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@Al\_Bundy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al_Bundy)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/29 "2010-08-10T20:26:18Z")
I’m convinced that I know the genesis of the thought in most cases. Their time is always worth more than yours. Also, they are smarter than everybody who planned for the lane change. “Surely, those meek milk toasts that would plan won’t mind letting me just this once. I’ll wave and all will be well or I’ll just squeeze in and not look back.” ---
**Author:** ![B.Serum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/b.serum/32/14266_2.png) [@B.Serum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/B.Serum)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/30 "2010-08-10T20:32:17Z")
The idea behind the zipper method is that the people in the opposing lanes DO NOT PASS ONE ANOTHER. I’ve seen truckers understand this and drive in the closing lane at the same speed, as the other lane, even though there may be open road ahead of them. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/31 "2010-08-10T20:37:52Z")
Around the Bay Area most on-ramps have metering lights, which control the flow of traffic onto the freeway. These are very effective in preventing slowdowns - few enough cars come down the ramp at a time so that they can get up to speed and merge very efficiently. Without this five or six cars are bunched up, at least some will have to stop before a safe place to merge opens up, the car they merge in front of has to slow to let them in, and everyone backs up. In the case in the OP, when you merge early there is usually enough space to let you merge without much slowing of anyone. If you wait until the end, the car who lets you in has to stop, and that makes everyone behind him stop, and stop for the time it takes for enough of a space to open up for the merge. We have some exit only lanes at which this happens. Legally you are supposed to get out of them if you are not exiting well before the exit. practically, there are always some morons who wait for the last minute to get out of the lanes, and some bigger morons who let them in. I’d think that being stuck for five minutes trying to illegally exit would be an excellent learning experience. Sometimes CHP comes and tickets these idiots, but there are way more idiots than cops. ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/32 "2010-08-10T20:57:11Z")
There’s a place on I-69 just north of Indy where it goes from four lanes to two. The vast majority of people merge early in relatively heavy traffic. It’s rare to see anyone get stuck at the merge point there because the traffic is generally local and all but a few jerks know it works better to merge early. Chessic- I always keep a suitable gap in front of me in stop and go traffic. I can keep my foot off the clutch a lot longer that way, and don’t even try to tell me to get an automatic. Every time I go through a long backup around Atlanta, there’s usually a couple of new wrecks slowing things down more because idiots don’t keep enough space between cars and one backends another.:mad: ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/33 "2010-08-10T21:23:57Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > While we’re on the subject, you know how sometimes you’re in stop-and-go traffic and someone decides to “even it out” by going slower and letting a gap open up? STOP IT! > > In principle, your technique should work. But it could only work if you knew what the average speed was and travelled at it. But you don’t. If you guess too high, you’d run out of space too soon and hit the guy in front of you. So you have two choices: close in on the guy and _then_ abruptly hit your brakes, exacerbating the problem you were trying to eliminate, or guess a speed slower than the average speed, which is a problem for even more obvious reasons. > > You’re not a computer. You can’t calculate the average speed accurately enough. Just give up and do the stop-and-go like the rest of us, OK? Hahaaa! This cracks me up, because a very smart guy I know taught me that. He broke down mad math and science to me that went over my head, but basically he said, “just don’t ever really break\*…try and kind of keep going as long as you can without breaking at all…slowing and speeding as need be. If we all do it, no more traffic jams” Of course, we all just give it up and do the sad stop and go. \*unless you really have to. / I’m one of those assholes that refused to go slow when there were open lanes leading up to the merge point. Merge at the merge point. Easy as pie. ETA: even if I let 10 cars pass me at a merge point, I have cost myself all of 30 seconds. I have no idea why it kills folks to let a car pass. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/34 "2010-08-10T21:31:04Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > “just don’t ever really break\*…try and kind of keep going as long as you can without breaking at all…slowing and speeding as need be. If we all do it, no more traffic jams” This site expounds upon that theory. > **[TRAFFIC WAVE EXPERIMENTS](http://amasci.com/amateur/traffic/trafexp.html)** ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/35 "2010-08-10T21:32:58Z")
> [@Drain\_Bead](#): > > this is a case of three lanes going down to two, not two going down to one. I imagine the principles are the same, whether it’s two lanes merging into one, or three lanes merging into two, or seven lanes merging into one shoulder covered with gravel while police helicopers hover and people on overhead bridges shout “Go OJ! Mexico or bust!” ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/36 "2010-08-10T21:38:50Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Around the Bay Area most on-ramps have metering lights, which control the flow of traffic onto the freeway. These are very effective in preventing slowdowns - few enough cars come down the ramp at a time so that they can get up to speed and merge very efficiently. Without this five or six cars are bunched up, at least some will have to stop before a safe place to merge opens up, the car they merge in front of has to slow to let them in, and everyone backs up. The ramp meters work for the freeways, but they do so by transferring backups to the onramps. > [@Voyager](#): > > In the case in the OP, when you merge early there is usually enough space to let you merge without much slowing of anyone. If you wait until the end, the car who lets you in has to stop, and that makes everyone behind him stop, and stop for the time it takes for enough of a space to open up for the merge. This has nothing to do with where one merges. The slowdowns happen because there are then twice as many cars in the same space; people inevitably slow down in order to maintain their preferred following distances. If everybody merged earlier, the slowdown would simply happen earlier, wherever the last cars happen to merge. What merging early does is take more of the road out of use. Take the OP to its logical extension, and imagine that the road was one lane rather than two for its full length, but carrying the same number of cars. Wouldn’t you expect it to move slower? ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/37 "2010-08-10T21:49:28Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > [What merging early does is take more of the road out of use. Take the OP to its logical extension, and imagine that the road was one lane rather than two for its full length, but carrying the same number of cars. Wouldn’t you expect it to move slower? Yes, but if too many people wait too late to merge or merge too imperfectly, you end up with the OP situation with people piled up at the end, which is both dangerous and can slow down traffic more than if people had merged too early. Again, IMO IN THEORY if everybody merges at the last possible moment and everybody cooperates it slows down the traffic the least. But since most people are human and too many are assholes, on average everybody else and you are, IMO, better off merging a bit on the early side of last possible moment. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/38 "2010-08-10T22:01:38Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > > [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > > > [What merging early does is take more of the road out of use. Take the OP to its logical extension, and imagine that the road was one lane rather than two for its full length, but carrying the same number of cars. Wouldn’t you expect it to move slower? > > Yes, but if too many people wait too late to merge or merge too imperfectly, you end up with the OP situation with people piled up at the end, which is both dangerous and can slow down traffic more than if people had merged too early. > > Again, IMO IN THEORY if everybody merges at the last possible moment and everybody cooperates it slows down the traffic the least. But since most people are human and too many are assholes, on average everybody else and you are, IMO, better off merging a bit on the early side of last possible moment. billfish. Do you see the problem here? The same assholes are going to fuck it up by merging too early. It is always the assholes who fuck it up, so we should all err on the side of doing it right. Merge at the merge point like the signs say. ---
**Author:** ![smaje1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47774/32.png) [@smaje1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smaje1)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/39 "2010-08-10T23:10:13Z")
Awesome discussion here. Excellent subject to get Pitted. What about merging from two lanes to one on a normal road, in normal traffic? It drives me BATTY when people wait until they reach the merge point in this situation, since there is no good reason they can’t switch lanes earlier. It’s like they think drivers who are in the continuing lane are OBLIGATED to let them in when the merge point finally arrives, notwithstanding the fact that they could have merged over much earlier, since there was no one preventing them from doing so 50 or 100 feet earlier? I will deliberately block these people from free-merging in on my lane. In my mind, the people in the disappearing lane should have to either merge early enough, or yield to ME. Is there a law about this? If someone tried to merge right the merge point, but that happened to be right where my car is, and they hit me, are they at fault because they should have yielded to me? Or am I obligated to yield to them? ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846/40 "2010-08-10T23:29:14Z")
In normal driving conditions (in flowing traffic) I merge early. In heavy traffic conditions (as in crawling along at 5-10 mph, stop and go), I use my lane all the way to the merge point, along with the other drivers that have been taught as I have. A late zipper merge in these conditions is the most efficient. It’s the drivers that merge early in this case that piss me off, creating umpteen different merge points, where one is sufficient, most efficient, and preserves the same order of cars so nobody gets pissed off that they got jumped ahead in the queue because somebody decided to do the sensible thing and merge and the merge point. If everyone were just taught to late zipper merge in traffic conditions like these (and there are signs being developed to this effect that tell you when to merge early and when to merge late, as well as static ones like [this one](http://www.stopandgo.org/gallery/trafficsigns/images/IMG_3026C.jpg)) there would be fewer problems. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-explain-this-driving-mentality-to-me/549846.md?page=3)