The reason people slow down in heavy traffic is due to the closeness of other cars. Trying to drive fast with little room between vehicles is obviously nuts. Therefore, if people would leave more space between their cars, they could go faster. If people left enough space between their cars, the early merge or zipper merge question would be moot since there would be plenty of merge space wherever. The best thing that could happen to U.S. interstates would be to set and enforce following distance regulations. Get, and keep, everbody off each others’ asses on the road and watch traffic jams and accidents dwindle.
The left lane is the passing lane, especially on a two lane road, which is what Hwy 17 is. Everyone sees it’s a bid truck slowing things down, but they race up trying to cut in front of the people trying to pass the fucking truck on the left like you’re supposed to. Moron.
The point being, if you want to try and cut in line by passing on the right, I’m sure as fuck not going to let you back in to the left lane in front of me. You can sit there sucking fumes from that truck going 30mph in a 50mph zone til hell freezes over for all I care.
I’m horribly confused.
Poster 1: Obviously the thing to do in this situation is Thing A. In fact, that’s SO obvious, that the only reason anyone would have for doing anything different is to be an asshole, and so I will physically punish them.
Poster 2: Obviously the thing to do in this situation is Thing B. In fact, that’s SO obvious, that the only reason anyone would have for doing anything different is to be an asshole, and so I will physically punish them.
However, is it possible that even if the most recent academic literature is fairly clear on a subject, some people will be a little behind in their reading, and we need a solution that works even if not everyone is totally on board with it, rather than an excuse to cackle over the ability to fuck over people who are – many out of a genuine desire to maintain a civilised system fair to everyone – doing something other than the optimum behaviour, and feel justified about it?
It seems like everyone continuing to the point of closure, but maintaining the will or ability to merge then, may be the most efficient. But human nature has ingrained a deep suspicion of people who say “You’re doing something stupid. You should do this other thing instead, which JUST BY COINCIDENCE happens to mean I get to go first.” Even if it’s true, there’s obviously a great incentive to believe that spuriously.
Is it possible to drive in the clear lane at a speed no greater than those in the blocked lane? That has the disadvantage that (a) you don’t get to benefit yourself by zipping to the head of the queue and (b) people will be blocked from turning off the road across oncoming traffic, before the lane closure, which if there were any turnings, they might otherwise be able to do. But it has the advantage that (a) if they don’t feel they’re “cheating” people will be more willing to join you in that lane (b) when you reach the front, both lanes will be in full use, and people, seeing the people in the overtaking lane have been going at the same speed, won’t resent letting them in nearly as much © it only requires ONE car to do that, and pretty much everyone else will follow peforce, rather than requiring everyone to do the right thing on their own initiative.
So take control of traffic all on your lonesome and force people to drive the way YOU want them to? Yeah big difference.
I’m fairly sure that the level of competence of drivers in Calgary is well below the national average* (and national average ain’t much to write home about) - the concept of driving competently here is completely foreign, so it is not a big surprise to me that if zipper merges work well, we aren’t doing them here.
*Based on things other than my personal experience.
I had someone do that to me once. As I was driving up the shoulder on I-295, zipping past a couple of miles of stopped traffic, some dude in a big huge SUV started easing over the line to block me. I was able to pass, but our mirrors did touch—my mirror folded back a bit.
Who was the bozo here?
That distinction goes to all of the drivers who had missed the HUGE GIGANTIC FLASHING SIGN posted by the construction crew four miles back that said “Left lane closed. Use right lane and shoulder”
Let’s see. You zip by traffic in the breakdown lane and you are wondering who was the ‘bozo’? Really? I agree that the vehicle that tried to keep you from passing on the shoulder or breakdown lane, is also breaking the law. But so where you.
. You wonder why this pisses people off? Those people that pay attention to the rules of the road?
Do you know how dangerous your driving is? I do. I suspect that if you came across a car in the break down lane, and you did not rear end it, you would expect someone to let you in?
Do you really drive that way? If you do, you are an accident waiting to happen.
I suspect that a police officer would not just give you a ticket, but he would through the book at you.
Remember this, drivers like you make roads unsafe.
Huh?
If the large flashing sign, put in place by the highway maintenance people, tells traffic to use the shoulder, then why is it illegal for traffic to use the shoulder?
I agree that you have to be very careful when passing a long line of stationary cars, but if the road signs specifically tell you to use the shoulder, then you can use the shoulder. I’ve been in situations quite a few times where freeway maintenance required opening the breakdown lane to regular traffic, and it was always marked by signs making this clear.
Zipper merges work fine in theory. The problem with the theory is that it doesn’t account for the assholes who, instead of merging at the proper time, decide that they must get in front of at least one more car. Or two. Or three.
Every time I run across a situation where you are supposed to zipper merger, it is the fuckwads who insist that they have to be in front of every car possible who cause the problems. I routinely see people go around the barrels to get another car length. Or pull around to the left of someone who is merging to get ahead of them. These are the idiots who totally blow by the ‘merge now’ signs and then try and jam their car in way past the point of merge.
These 'idiots end up slowing the whole thing down, including themselves.
Slee
I’ve been driving since 1976. And I have never seen a traffic sign that points you to the breakdown lane for a couple of miles.
Maybe it’s regional…
Right now at this very moment there is a spot on US 1 in Princeton where this is happening, and last week I drove through a few spots along the Garden State Parkway, and some areas in the vicinity of the Tappan Zee Bridge where I found traffic driving on the shoulder due to construction.
To be fair, my “zipping along” was relative. I wasn’t going seventy down the shoulder; I was going about 25 or 30, watching very carefully for people who would also finally figure out that they were allowed to drive on the shoulder for the next few miles…and watching for people who had missed the big highway sign.
And I imagine that some folks might have come onto the highway on a downstream onramp, missing the big news.
I’ve been driving since 1983ish and I certainly have.
Why would you possibly say this, when the poster clearly says:
which was obviously the entire point of his post?
I’ve seen permitted shoulder riding in extended construction situations, too, as well as other anomalies like having slow traffic and trucks in the left lane instead of the right. And I’ve only been driving since 1991.
Apparently you need to get around more.
If the cars didn’t affect each other, there wouldn’t be a problem, everyone could drive however they liked and it would be up to them to reap the consequences, good or bad. But the cars DO effect each other. ALL the options involve imposing your opinions on everyone else, either because you queue, and let people in, thus delaying the people who queued behind you, or or because you queue, and don’t let people in, denying people the opportunity to overtake, or because you overtake, delaying people who aren’t. ALL of those affect other people. It doesn’t let you off the hook for picking WHICH of them is better. And not necessarily which is better if EVERYONE does it, but which is better if SOME people do it. Maybe, probably this idea is completely stupid, but WHY is it stupid? Just because it tries to make the effect on other people positive, rather than hidden?
Trucks in the left lane when the shouler is open for traffic isn’t an anomaly, it’s a recognition of the fact that the shoulder is not constructed for 80,000 pound truck travel. You see it a lot in Ohio during the orange barrel season.
I read the reports. They don’t show any real speed advantage for merging late. The first found a “statistically significant improvement” in throughput only on going from 3 lanes to one, and the third explicitly said there was no real difference in traffic throughput. Your middle cite isn’t itself a report supporting the case, but cites another report as a footnote.
But never mind. Let’s take it as a given that using both lanes and zipper merging is better than merging early into a single lane line, if only because the tailback is less likely to reach the preceding intersection and snarl it up. However, the marginally superior alternative of zipper merging is not the situation described by the OP. The OP’s situation is is that the single lane line has already formed, and at that point the arrangement isn’t going to transform into a two-lane-plus-zipper-merge.* So new arrivals should go with the system that’s already been adopted.* That’s manners.
To extend the supermarket analogy, if a line has formed at a single cashier and a second cashier comes on duty right beside the first, the existing line may split into two. But it may also remain a single line, with each person letting the person in front of them take the next available cashier. Eminently fair and civilised. At that point it is utterly dickish for any newcomers to decide there SHOULD be two lines and form a new one with themselves at the front. It doesn’t matter if it’s legal.
About zipper merging. Zipper merging isn’t really two fully choked, stop-start lanes of traffic taking it in turns to enter a bottleneck, fair and polite as that may be. In that situation there is no superior solution.
Zipper merging involves the drivers in two flowing lanes of traffic realising that they’re going to merge, slowing down together and matching speeds, ** and aligning gaps with cars in the other lane in advance**. That’s how the zipper keeps flowing nicely and nobody has to come to a halt. The people rushing to the front of the empty lane, stopping and then trying to force a gap ARE NOT doing this! What they should do if they want to use that lane, is creep along it at the same speed as the full lane, overlapping a gap between two cars, and signalling so they get an opportunity to be let in without either lane having to stop.
Sorry, didn’t see in his original post that it said to use the shoulder. When I have seen this, they clearly restripe the lanes so that the shoulder becomes the right lane. So, it’s not effectively the shoulder any more. Never signs that say to use the shoulder.
To go with your analogy; yeah there’s a second cashier waving her arms going “over here, over here, I’m open over here” but nobody budges out of the first line. They don’t want to skip anyone for gosh sakes. So even the guy at the end of the line who sees the open cashier and sees not a single person going over by her despite her attempts to flag them over is supposed to just sit in line?
Nah, I don’t think so.
In Chicago, on the airport road exiting the O’Hare terminal loop, which a short while later becomes the Kennedy Expressway, there’s a permanent sign that says “Shoulder Riding Allowed/Prohibited” with the last word reversible. Usually, it’s set to “prohibited,” but presumably it’s there to allow shoulder-riding during a rush of airport traffic (Thanksgiving, etc.).