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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.

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taiyang@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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LurkingLuddite@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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!

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- TwoTiredMice@feddit.dk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Someone made a simulator for these scenarios where you can adjust on driver behaviour and see metrics in what is most efficient.
  
  www.traffic-simulation.de
  
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  - LurkingLuddite@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    And it shows exactly what I’m talking about. When people are more interested in filling lanes than merging efficiently when one is disappearing, they reduce the throughput of traffic over all.
    
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ericwdhs@discuss.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Agreed on never being the one blocking merges, but for the merging party, “if people don’t prevent merges” is such a huge caveat that I think attempting a zipper merge at a lane ending at any appreciable speed is impractical at best and downright dangerous at worst.

If everyone is traveling slow already, failing to merge quickly at the lane ending isn’t a huge threat to safety and just a slight hit to efficiency. Most merges I’ve experienced are probably in the 40 to 80 mph range though. In that case, you absolutely do want to take the first decent merging opportunity you can, because waiting to do it until the lane ending can have huge safety and/or efficiency consequences if another good merging opportunity doesn’t open up at speed.

Also, I’m pretty sure zipper merging was mentioned zero times in driving lessons and tests where I’m from, so you should basically just assume other drivers don’t even have it as a concept. If you’re from somewhere where more people practice it regularly, then I can see why you are more encouraged to enforce it as a baseline.

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Starik@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This will only be done right by AI.

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