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Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

arstechnica.com

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Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#51

Post by Klinky »

ericHosick wrote: post #40
notacoward wrote: post #27

Zipper merging works great as long as everyone on both sides is willing to alternate (or if strong enforcement requires them to do so). Otherwise, letting "late mergers" scream past fifty "early mergers" often creates a situation worse than simple early merge. There's plenty of blame to go around. * The vast majority of the people blasting down the late-merge lane clearly have no interest in alternating or merging in…

Zipper merging is the optimal solution. People early merge because they think it is the optimal/moral/better/'done my part' solution. If everyone knew about zipper merging there would be no early mergers (and 'late mergers' don't exist within the context of zipper merging).

In simulations zipper merging is an optimal solution. In reality, relying on thousands of drivers to properly follow specific directions and be completely aware of their surroundings is a flawed solution. Telling people how to do something efficiently doesn't mean they'll do it that way. People are extremely loose when it comes to following driving rules, e.g. speed, texting, minimum distances, merging, etc..

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#52

Post by rcthompson »

notacoward wrote: post #27

Zipper merging works great as long as everyone on both sides is willing to alternate (or if strong enforcement requires them to do so). Otherwise, letting "late mergers" scream past fifty "early mergers" often creates a situation worse than simple early merge. There's plenty of blame to go around. * The vast majority of the people blasting down the late-merge lane clearly have no interest in alternating or merging in…

If enough people are doing zipper merging, then there is no way to cut in line, because both lanes are equally backed up. Then once people get to the merge point, they won't have any sense of unfairness because the other lane was waiting just as long, so there will be less impetus for "vigilantes" to mess things up. I'm not saying there will be no problems, but I don't think that more zipper merging will automatically lead to more of these problems.

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#53

Post by Negitivefrags »

malandrew wrote: post #35

That video explanation made no sense to me. Basically the "interface" presented to the drivers has not changed, so why would drivers deviate from how they currently merge? Because the government said so? I don't see this working. However there are two solutions that could promote zipper merging: (1) Force both lanes to the center before moving that center lane to the side that is available ahead: ____________________…

In New Zealand we just have signs like this all over the place:

http://i.imgur.com/AtaDOGX.jpg

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#54

Post by justinpaulson »

The problem is, there are two very different ways to merge based on the flow of traffic. If traffic is moving, then early merge is the preferred method. If traffic is not moving, then a late merge makes more sense.

The problem is people who do not merge early when traffic is flowing. These people wait until the last second to merge instead of finding an opening while traffic is flowing and force traffic to slow down in order to let them in.

And the really real problem is that the average driver in the USA has no idea what they are doing and should probably not be driving at all. It would take a huge change in the way we train drivers to get them to recognize when they should use each type of merge. And forcing people into one way to merge or the other is not really the "fastest/safest" way, because it varies on conditions.

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#55

Post by Klinky »

rcthompson wrote: post #52
notacoward wrote: post #27

Zipper merging works great as long as everyone on both sides is willing to alternate (or if strong enforcement requires them to do so). Otherwise, letting "late mergers" scream past fifty "early mergers" often creates a situation worse than simple early merge. There's plenty of blame to go around. * The vast majority of the people blasting down the late-merge lane clearly have no interest in alternating or merging in…

If enough people are doing zipper merging, then there is no way to cut in line, because both lanes are equally backed up. Then once people get to the merge point, they won't have any sense of unfairness because the other lane was waiting just as long, so there will be less impetus for "vigilantes" to mess things up. I'm not saying there will be no problems, but I don't think that more zipper merging will automaticall…

The question then is, do enough people zipper merge, and do people really have a proper understanding of fairness? A lot of the driving population may not be acting rationally, or even have enough awareness to comprehend the big the picture. Cars put people into their own bubble, where quite oftenly only their needs are being considered.

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#57

Post by joshwa »

flomo wrote: post #43
kelnos wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've rarely seen people in (northern) California do proper zipper merges. CA has some of the most clueless and inattentive driving I've ever seen.

Disagree. I used to reverse-commute through the Golden Gate Bridge and the Caldecott Tunnel, where the freeway went from 4 lanes to 2 in both places. 99% of drivers manage to zipper-merge properly. Likewise, almost everyone zippers at the South 101 Central Freeway merge. California drivers may or may not be bad, but they're much better than the ones in Minnesota.

I wish some of the "exit only" lanes would change to be zipper-merge-able-- in SF, think about the 7th street exit on 80E just before the Bay Bridge-- two empty lanes!-- and lots of "cheaters" whereas with a zipper merge everything would move faster.

IIRC California officially endorses early merging, though?

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#58

Post by craigds »

molf wrote: post #9

I'm surprised this is written like zipper merging is some kind of recently discovered secret. Zipper merging (or weaving) has been standard practice in parts of Europe for 20 years (maybe longer – I can't really remember anything else). Since March 2014 it is even mandatory in Belgium, and anyone merging early may risk a €55 fine [1]. It has been repeatedly advocated and promoted by various governments in Europe [2]…

Agreed. Zipper merging has been standard practice in New Zealand my whole (28 year) life. Except we call it "zip merging" because "zipper" sounds awfully foreign around here. I didn't know there was another way to merge until I read this article.

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#59

Post by john_b »

notacoward wrote: post #27

Zipper merging works great as long as everyone on both sides is willing to alternate (or if strong enforcement requires them to do so). Otherwise, letting "late mergers" scream past fifty "early mergers" often creates a situation worse than simple early merge. There's plenty of blame to go around. * The vast majority of the people blasting down the late-merge lane clearly have no interest in alternating or merging in…

> "Without enforcing proper merge behavior on both sides, zipper merge just becomes a big Prisoners' Dilemma game with a few defectors screwing all of the cooperators."

Except unlike prisoner's dilemma, it's not a zero (or negative) sum game. The entire traffic flow can speed up if zipper merging is done. The "late mergers" don't have to risk losing their game of "chicken" while the "vigilantes" don't have to deal with the reckless maneuvers of some of the former.

People don't do zipper merging because people are human and drive emotionally [1]. The stereotypes of the conservative early merger claiming the moral high ground and the reckless late merger doing anything to save a few minutes are the cultural results of this mentality.

[1] Another example is the special breed of driver who stops the traffic flow on a major road (which has the right of way) to let someone on a minor cross road or parking lot exit onto the major road, thus inconveniencing everyone behind them for the self satisfaction of having helped the one person they can see.

Re: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

#60

Post by _delirium »

Noted wrote: post #50
kelnos wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've rarely seen people in (northern) California do proper zipper merges. CA has some of the most clueless and inattentive driving I've ever seen.

I rarely have seen issues in California with zipper merge, when the lanes are actually merging. Most of the time the issue I've seen is when people are cutting over from a turn only lane to try and force their way to go straight.

Yeah, that situation is where I see it 2nd-most; first most is people trying to change lanes into an exit lane right at the exit when they're in a non-exit lane and want to exit. Those are lane changes, though, not merges.
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