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Same here (Scotland). I think the tendency to queue and not fill both lanes is out of a misplaced sense of fairness - you can't help but feel very judged if you

Same here (Scotland). I think the tendency to queue and not fill both lanes is out of a misplaced sense of fairness - you can't help but feel very judged if you run right up an empty right-hand lane all the way to a merge point. Because you really are queue jumping, even if it's the collective fault of all the drivers who created the queue in the first place. It needs public education to get people over this suboptimal behaviour. On a tangential note, what's up with everyone everywhere saying "my God, drivers in [where I am] are the absolute worst"? They can't all be right.

afaikilt 8y ago
yeah.. we have merge in turn here, the curved arrow on the road at the end of a lane means this. we also have text signs for "use both lanes" and "merge in turn" but mostly people are not too keen to actually follow the rules.. i used to follow the pack, now i just follow the instructions and merge as late as possible. - probably this makes me an asshole
Retric 8y ago
> They can’t all be right. I think people just adjust the scale to what they actually see. Deveoping countries with a new car culture are probably objectively worse, but not many people go there and see what it’s like.
alkonaut 8y ago
Norms change slowly and queueing is a strong social norm. But if it's actually tought in driving schools or even made into law then we can usually overcome it. This is like how it's pretty natural to let people out of a lift or a train before you enter, regardless of who waited longest. It's just not efficient to get people in before others go out. So we are tought to let people out first.
rfrey 8y ago
> what's up with everyone everywhere saying "my God, drivers in [where I am] are the absolute worst"? I think most of those people have not lived many places. My perception is that there are solid differences in driving culture between some cities. I found San Francisco traffic heavy, but with fairly courteous drivers. Vancouver same. Toronto was atrocious - lived there for ten years and never got used to the aggression and almost sociopathic attitude toward other drivers. Now I'm in Edmonton, where it's back to mostly OK - drivers here are a little more timid than other places but don't lean on their horn for every perceived slight or compromise the whole system to gain a 5 second advantage. My completely unscientific take is that the most aggravating traffic comes when traffic gets dense enough to be a real irritant (I dunno - say maybe doubling a normal drive time between two destinations), but is still civil enough that most (say 90%) drivers are pretty polite and cooperative. That means that aggressive driving actually pays off, which makes it harder to take for people who don't zip past traffic in the turning lane only to forcefully merge back in.
shambolicfroli 8y ago
The way to avoid queue jumping is to match speeds, then zipper-merge when the lane ends.

afaikilt 8y ago

yeah.. we have merge in turn here, the curved arrow on the road at the end of a lane means this. we also have text signs for "use both lanes" and "merge in turn" but mostly people are not too keen to actually follow the rules.. i used to follow the pack, now i just follow the instructions and merge as late as possible. - probably this makes me an asshole

Retric 8y ago

> They can’t all be right. I think people just adjust the scale to what they actually see. Deveoping countries with a new car culture are probably objectively worse, but not many people go there and see what it’s like.

alkonaut 8y ago

Norms change slowly and queueing is a strong social norm. But if it's actually tought in driving schools or even made into law then we can usually overcome it. This is like how it's pretty natural to let people out of a lift or a train before you enter, regardless of who waited longest. It's just not efficient to get people in before others go out. So we are tought to let people out first.

rfrey 8y ago

> what's up with everyone everywhere saying "my God, drivers in [where I am] are the absolute worst"? I think most of those people have not lived many places. My perception is that there are solid differences in driving culture between some cities. I found San Francisco traffic heavy, but with fairly courteous drivers. Vancouver same. Toronto was atrocious - lived there for ten years and never got used to the aggression and almost sociopathic attitude toward other drivers. Now I'm in Edmonton, where it's back to mostly OK - drivers here are a little more timid than other places but don't lean on their horn for every perceived slight or compromise the whole system to gain a 5 second advantage. My completely unscientific take is that the most aggravating traffic comes when traffic gets dense enough to be a real irritant (I dunno - say maybe doubling a normal drive time between two destinations), but is still civil enough that most (say 90%) drivers are pretty polite and cooperative. That means that aggressive driving actually pays off, which makes it harder to take for people who don't zip past traffic in the turning lane only to forcefully merge back in.

shambolicfroli 8y ago

The way to avoid queue jumping is to match speeds, then zipper-merge when the lane ends.