Depends. If there’s lots of traffic, yes. If it’s sparse enough that you can merge without slowing people down too much, just do it early.
Comment on That's a no
DScratch@sh.itjust.works 23 hours ago
Merging at the last minute is the correct way to do it.
Zipper merge, you fucks!
Mongostein@lemmy.ca 23 hours ago
IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 23 hours ago
Yeah, that’s the big asterisk on the “zipper merging is more efficient” premise. It assumes that things are already bottlenecked. If you have the space to merge early without slowing down, you do that. People trying to force their way in at the last minute (when they didn’t have to) is one of the things that triggers the bottleneck in the first place.
rainwall@piefed.social 21 hours ago
Zipper merge is always the most efficient if people dont prevent merges, regardless of road conditions. It means both open lanes are used to move cars forward until the last moment when they cannot. “Move over early” means less throughput in the system, no matter “how open” one lane is at some point.
By blocking merges, you causes braking, which is what causes traffic. You framing people driving efficiently to prevent traffic as “people trying to force their way in last minute” means its you creating traffic, not them.
You’re arguing from a sense of moral suppority, I.e “I got in line early, you should have to,” not from a sense of efficently moving cars down a road.
taiyang@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
It’s rare, but I think they’re referring to when it’s open enough and running at optimal speeds. It happened the other day on a side street during an off hour, the free lane couldn’t cut to the front without going like 70mph in a 40mph zone.
Of course a muscle car did just that, but still.
LurkingLuddite@piefed.social 20 hours ago
No.
Throughput is determined by number of through-lanes and the speed at which traffic is moving. Period. Completely.
Filling the merge lane when traffic is already slow does nothing but drive density up, which slows traffic further.
Sure, YOU might save some time by passing a bunch of cars, but it DOES NOT IMPROVE THROUGHPUT.
Zipper merging is about NOT having an area of abrupt speed change. It is not about using up a lane that is going away. Period. Ever.
It’s the same as an on-ramp: If you’re speeding up just to slam on your brakes to merge, that’s not zipper merging!
Banana@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
K but people don’t tend to complain about those driving down the empty lane if there is no bottle neck.
Obviously if you’re racing down to cut someone off, that’s just as rude as any unsafe merge, but thats not unique to zipper merging, so is it relevant?
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
I’ll merge early but also try to go a bit slower than the person in front of me to open a gap which allows me to absorb some of the traffic wave (where flow alternatively speeds up and slows down from people trying to get up to speed only to have to slam on the brakes because some car ahead wasn’t going fast enough to maintain that), as well as leave space for others to merge at speed.
Though I sometimes close the gap if I notice people pulling into the right lane to try to skip the line.
TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca 14 hours ago
If it’s that sparse then the situation in the meme is a non-issue
Mongostein@lemmy.ca 11 hours ago
…until people make it an issue by speeding up and cutting people off, causing it to bottleneck
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
I would agree with this if literally anyone else knew how to zipper merge
Banana@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
The solution is educating people about zipper merging, not getting angry at those who actually do it.
los0220@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Banana@sh.itjust.works 19 hours ago
We only started seeing signs in my city telling people to zipper merge, but I was never taught it in driver’s ed, and we really should be.
I wish we had better signage here like you have in Poland.
Philote@lemmy.ml 22 hours ago
At a respectable speed though, merge lane is not a passing lane. My rule is whatever speed can be maintained stay with the car speed in the lane to be merged into, jamming the front punishes everyone cueing properly.
ragepaw@lemmy.ca 22 hours ago
The the merging lane is empty for a half km, then it’s proper to drive to the front and merge. If you just drive slow, then you’re a problem for the sake of being a problem.
Drive to the front, match speed, zipper merge. It isn’t hard.
LurkingLuddite@piefed.social 20 hours ago
Depends on what you mean by “the front”. Too many people do not know how to look thousands of feet down the road. Probably why so many merge too early.
The assholes that also do not know how to look thousands of feet down the road fly to the end and cram in, which does nothing but further reduce throughput because it slows the lane people need to merge into.
ragepaw@lemmy.ca 19 hours ago
That is literally what a zipper merge is, and what you are supposed to do. Go to the end and merge. If they are “cramming” in, then the people in the lane are not doing their part either, because you are supposed to let people merge.
When people properly zipper merge, traffic will keep flowing. Your complaint about reducing throughput is a “well of fucking course it will” because you’re putting more cars through the same space regardless of where they merge. People who slow down with hundreds of meters of space, then stop and wait for someone to let them in makes the problem worse, not better.
Philote@lemmy.ml 22 hours ago
That was the respectable speed part. I agree too slow is also an issue.
ragepaw@lemmy.ca 19 hours ago
Fair.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 15 hours ago
Zooming to the front to try to merge at the last minute and creating a choke point that stops traffic for half a mile is NOT the correct way to do a zipper merge…
DScratch@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
You shouldn’t be able to, because both lanes are full and moving at half speed.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 12 hours ago
But they’re not. Zipper merges might be the efficient thing to do, but here everyone is taught to merge early so the guy doing 70 km/h in the empty lane when the speed limit is 50 and then demanding to merge is generally seen as an asshole by everyone else, especially because those people usually don’t wait for you to make room either, they often just start merging into other cars knowing someone will hit the brakes.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 11 hours ago
Except people do it anyway, I’m surprised so many people are trying to pretend they’ve never seen this.
Traffic isn’t some collective consciousness thing that moves like a well-oiled machine. People are selfish and do what they think is to their best advantage, even if it causes the overall traffic conditions to be worse.
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Gave a ride to someone who for one hour kept bitching about drivers who use zipper merge properly. didn’t want to tell him he was wrong.
he was so convinced and fuel by hatred of better drivers.
LurkingLuddite@piefed.social 21 hours ago
Nothing about the zipper merge says, “last minute”. It is wholly and entirely about matching speeds and making room.
Guess what dictates the speed of the lane that gets to travel forward? The amount of traffic that gets to travel… in that reduced number of lanes.
The people racing to the end of the closing lane are doing nothing but increasing traffic density, which directly hurts the effort of zipper merging. If it’s going from two lanes to one, the density MUST halve somewhere if traffic is full. That’s never going to happen at full speed if there are assholes wedging in at the last second and pushing traffic density past what people comfortably go full speed at.
Hint: it is not bumper to bumper on the highway.
Randelung@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Last minute is absolutely part of it. Use the available queueing space to keep congestion from spreading.
LurkingLuddite@piefed.social 17 hours ago
No it is not. Ever. You cannot magically add throughput by cramming in ahead of the bottleneck. That ONLY increases density, which DEMONSTRABLY reduces speeds.
Guess what happens when speed goes down? Throughput also goes down! You cannot magically add throughput by filling space beyond what is reasonable for the speeds you want to go. That’s not how humans work.
Randelung@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
It’s not about throughout. You want previous intersections and ramps to be free. The extra lane is car storage space. If one lane is stopped and the other is free you absolutely move up to the merge point. Safely, mind you. The speed limit is way too fast, 30-40 kph is enough. Merging early causes shockwaves that turn into full blown stops upstream. Plus you block the whole lane until you’ve merged.
I’ve done traffic control systems for almost a decade so I actually know a little about the subject.
Visstix@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Yes before the lane is closed. They are not doing that.
MSBBritain@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
No. You are explicitly supposed to go to the very end of the closing lane, and then merge, not before it closes.
Visstix@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Well a closing lane would be marked with an arrow pointing to the lane next to it, and if it’s closed it’s a red X. You merge before the red X. I don’t see a closing lane the same as a closed lane. Maybe it’s a translation thing. And every country is different.
flandish@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
thank you. the math agrees, too. zipper merges are the way to go!