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Zipper merging works far better in practice than the early merging proposed in the article. To begin with you usually can't see where the land ends well enough
by Tloewald 13y ago
Zipper merging works far better in practice than the early merging proposed in the article. To begin with you usually can't see where the land ends well enough to merge early, and once things slow down you're screwed. Zipper merging works great if everyone expects everyone else to do it. The problem in the US is that people trying to zipper merge are punished by drivers who think early merging is polite.
- dwd 13y agoMost drivers (at least in Australia) will be courteous in this way. Where it breaks down is that the point of merging tends to move backwards, eventually to a point where drivers are merging quite early, sometimes to the point where arriving vehicles don't even know a merge is occuring. What then happens is drivers push ahead and attempt to start a new merge close to the barrier/traffic cones again. However no one wants to merge twice and see these restarts as skipping the line. The OPs main point of leaving larger gaps might solve this, but generally gaps will fill and you are then back to gridlock.
- Tloewald 13y agoThis accords with my own experience driving in Sydney, where the need to merge is frequent, but not Canberra, which has more more US-like freeway system.
- dwd 13y agoBrisbane had a few bad years of building insane combined on/off ramps that tend to block frequently as everyone needs to be in that lane but with three or four lanes of traffic. Hale Street as you pass Suncorp Stadium is a particularly bad one.
- seanp2k2 13y agoYou also get many US drivers who refuse to let anyone in and just tailgate the car in front of them, so they can be "first" (in their minds).