This sums it up nicely. Self important dicks.
Believe what you want. Merging early is not courteous in high-traffic situations. It just creates a mess and adds to everyone’s frustration. Just like waving people on when you have the right of way. You may think you’re being courteous, but you’re messing with the predictable order of things.
Nope. The total speed for the road will always be throttled by the single lane. As long as cars are entering the lane at (or near) the maximum load it will bear, and passing through it at that speed, it doesn’t matter what happens before that point. The only difference is the order the cars go through - in which case obviously the most efficient approach (if in the closing lane) is to remain in it at the top speed you can go until the last moment, and then pray that somebody lets you in fast, or (if in the persisting lane) to remain in it at the top speed you can go the whole time, and pray that nobody in front of you is letting anyone in.
Or, if everyone is merging early, you could try and game the system by changing out of the persisting lane and racing ahead in the closing lane, to merge back in at the last minute. Assuming nobody catches on this should work like a charm.
Everyone should read the book ‘Traffic.’ It goes into this subject at great length. It’s a witty and fascinating read.
I couldn’t agree more. It drives me crazy.
ETA: Used to drive me crazy. I can’t actually drive now, but I swear it has nothing to do with not knowing how to navigate traffic!
I think we are talking about different situations. On the roads I drive there is PLENTY of time to merge before hitting the absolute have to merge point and allow traffic to flow at the speed limit. Plenty of places to merge without slowing others down.
What makes a mess are those that are in the proper lane, going the speed limit and see an open lane and try to pass everyone else when there is a merge coming up. They then hit the brakes at the absolute end of the road and screw things up. They are the asses that are not paying attention or simply don’t care if they disrupt the flow of traffic for everyone else. Traffic would move just fine if these people would merge into the moving traffic and just go with the flow.
Again, there are a lot of different situations. When you have plenty of room to merge earlier without slowing down traffic, it is better to do that than try to pass that one extra car or ten and ending up coming to a complete halt and slowing or stopping all of the other vehicles when you try to get back in. It’s not just rude. It’s dangerous.
The predictable order of things is to try not to come to a stop on a road because you did not have the forethought to merge when you could, and help keep traffic flowing.
I learned the tactic I described earlier from truckers, and pulykamell and others notwithstanding, I remain convinced that, as groups, truckers understand highway traffic dynamics better than car drivers.
Exactly, enipla. There are TWO MILES of road in which to make the merge. The vast majority of people get in the proper lanes well before that point. It was maybe 20-30 cars at most, while I waited in line for five minutes, that breezed by the line and then slammed on their brakes at the merge point, causing people to have to stop to let them in and backing up traffic further.
It’s fine to breeze by if people aren’t going to have to slow down to let you in, but if they are, you’re just causing problems. I’d rather traffic go 45-55 for those two miles (which is what the speed limit actually does–it goes to 55 two miles away and 45 about a half-mile away from the merge point) than sit in 20 mph traffic because 30 people couldn’t be arsed to wait.
Past the merge point it immediately goes to 45-50 and stays there. Clearly the problem is the mergers, not the amount of traffic on the road.
Oh well. It’s supposed to be gone on September 1st, and the same repairs they did going the other direction last summer were done 10 days early, so hopefully I only have a couple more weeks of this tops.
Again, a very American idea. In a situation where you’re faced with doing what people think works versus what might actually work, do what people think works. Otherwise you risk making people think in a context where they don’t think they need to think. That really fucks things up, sometimes to the point of creating real ressntment.
Where is this magical place where the traffic flows at 45-50 mph after the merge point?
The only reason I ever have any feelings about these threads is because every day I and countless others have to sit thru merges into a single lane that leave us crawling at 0-5 mph for miles. So for this situation I say, please heed the advice of the quoted traffic engineers and the big honking sign that says “USE BOTH LANES TO MERGE POINT” linked to by pulykamell. Please don’t move over slightly to block us because you fell in earlier (probably thinking it was the nice polite non-asshole thing to do), and are now regretting it, and respond by doing something even more assholish.
But if you got 45-50, meh. Count your blessings IMO.
Yes. The European-style zipper merge is a fantasy, at least when car density reaches a certain psychological tipping point.
Yeah, no kidding. Some bozo waving a guy in, while the people coming from another direction have no idea they are doing that…ka-blammo! Or, someone waves someone in and the wavee thinks the way is clear, but the waver hasn’t really checked all the directions…ka-blammo! Or, some idiot waving someone else in, the other person balks, then moves up, the first guy moves up, stops, the second guy goes, stops, they both go…ka-blammo!
Just follow the right of way. Jeez.
And, West Coast on-ramps…ha! Too easy. Try merging onto the Belt Parkway, where some of the on-ramps seem to be about 100 feet. The trick is to wait at the beginning of the on-ramp, just so you can see the traffic, anticipate the opening, and floor it. What not to do: go to the end of the on-ramp and stop. That gives you 6 inches to zero to 60 mph.
I don’t see at all what this has to do with “American ideas” at all.
Here’s the problem: as long as we can agree to one merge point, everything is fair. Or, hey, I’m down with the trucker idea of keeping pace with the adjacent lane (although this is not behavior I’ve ever noticed before, I’ll keep a look out for next time.) That works for me, too.
The most logical and easiest place for this merge point is, well, where the lane runs out. The jackasses who merge right at the vaguest hint of a merge sign two miles out interrupt the flow of both lanes of traffic and create extra space in the merge lane. It is natural for drivers to want to fill this gap. I’ve never seen a passenger car pace the next lane when there is 50 feet of space in front of them. If you can teach them to do this, great. But why the fuck bother when you can just have everyone merge at the last moment, when there is no choice? Then, some other guy decides at 1.5 miles out to merge. Then at 1.25 miles. Then at 1 mile, etc., etc. All this way, it’s creating gaps in the merge lane, which other cars naturally fill, and disturbs the order in such a way that the early mergers are in the back of the line, and the late mergers are in front. If you want to preserve everyone’s sanity and a sense of fairness, use your lane to the merge point.
Also, this is exactly what we were taught to do in driver’s ed. If everyone followed this simple rule, there’d be no need for any sort of animosity. (Not that I’ve ever noticed any from late merging. It doesn’t seem to be that big a deal around here.)
We got some of those on the Kennedy (I-94) near downtown Chicago. I hate those. It’s pretty much a gun-it and pray approach. And you don’t really get any view of the traffic from the beginning of the on-ramp (they’re elevated on-ramps originating on overpasses, with concrete barriers on the side which block the view a bit.) You don’t really get a good view of what’s about to happen until you’re about half-way down the ramp. It’s…exciting.
Most of them think they are more important than you and their time is more valuable than their time (if their time was REALLY that valuable they wouldn’t be driving, they would be driven, in which case they can sit in traffic and work out of their office from the back seat of the Lincoln).
Some are just stupid or clueless.
A few have legitimate emergencies.
But a lot fewer cars are affected, and only for a few hundred feet, not half a mile. The speed of the metering lights can also be adjusted for conditions.
If people at the merge point left enough space for every other car merges, I’d agree. This rarely happens, though. Surely you’ve noticed that when a light turns green there is a long lag time before a car five or six back starts to move. which depends on the reaction times of the drivers of earlier cars. (The ones before me seem to resemble learning delayed snails.) If you can avoid braking, everyone goes faster.
I’ve observed that cars let people coming in from an on-ramp in front of them much more willingly than cars perceived to be gaming the system. In fact, there have been one or two cases where both lanes were equally full, and the merge worked better, because you are more likely to set someone stuck next to you for 1/4 mile in than someone zooming up.
Well said. And, in addition, you have several choices of places to merge. There is often someone who leaves a lot of room, and merging in front of him doesn’t slow anyone down much. At a merge point you have no choices.
An illustration of this is one road with a car pool lane, 2 traffic lanes, and a long on-ramp which goes away. I’ve noticed that people merging don’t cause much of a problem, since they usually wait for a space to open up, and are done before the on-ramp turns into an off-ramp. Those who do cause problems are carpoolers who seem offended at spending any more time in a normal traffic lane than absolutely necessary and who push in, often causing braking an a general jam - and sometimes blocking two lanes when there isn’t enough room.
But the key is that the only way they could do this is for them to slow down. Other cars who already merged have filled the spaces that were previously open in the through lane. With more cars in the through lane, the only way to open up more space between those cars is for those cars to slow down. That’s what’s going to happen with the last car in, no matter where one merges.
I submit that you just don’t understand the etiquette quite well enough. New Yorkers will always* let you merge, but you have to lay claim to the space. If you don’t stick your fender out there like you mean it, you’re going to be ignored.
Kinda the same as getting waited on at a bagel place, come to think of it. You have to be assertive. But once you are, everyone understands what you want and will let you take it.
*Well, not always, there are assholes everywhere. And NYC taxis won’t stop and let you in, they’ll swerve around you at 40 mph. But as a rule.
Bolding mine.
“have to”? The hell.
I NEVER reward this assholish behavior by letting them in. If everyone did that, maybe the assholes would learn.