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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

#191

Post by CWuestefeld »

nhaehnle wrote: post #162
chrisseaton wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"few people know how to behave in a traffic circle" Tell them this: imagine a big circular road. Then imagine other roads joining it with T junctions. Then imagine the road is one-way. Finally just shrink the road in your head. That's all it is!

There's one more rule: traffic on the circular road has priority.

There's one more rule: traffic on the circular road has priority.

This is how it would work in a sane system, but they don't always work this way. I can think of several examples in New Jersey, particularly around Flemington, where the circle manages the intersection of two roads having different importance. In these cases, the important road is given the right-of-way all the way through the circle, and those coming around the circle from the lesser road are required to yield.

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

#192

Post by robin_reala »

beejiu wrote: post #29

As a driver in the UK, I don't understand what exactly the difference between a merge and an overtake is. It is quite common here for roads to change from 2 lanes to 1 lane. There's no signage telling you to merge. There's no rules telling you what to do. You just operate by the same logic as an overtake, and you'll find that, quite naturally, everybody 'zip merges'. Perhaps the reason for the inefficiency is having…

Also a UK driver. Before reading this article it had never occurred to me that there was any other way of merging on lane reduction.

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

#194

Post by bsder »

o0-0o wrote: post #33
beejiu wrote: post #29

As a driver in the UK, I don't understand what exactly the difference between a merge and an overtake is. It is quite common here for roads to change from 2 lanes to 1 lane. There's no signage telling you to merge. There's no rules telling you what to do. You just operate by the same logic as an overtake, and you'll find that, quite naturally, everybody 'zip merges'. Perhaps the reason for the inefficiency is having…

The difference is localized. The UK is much smaller, and therefore has less regional tastes about merging. In the Midwest and Eastern seaboards of the US you have polite and diverse people respectively. In California, you have experienced drivers. California works like the zipper merge already, and the rest of the US is flummoxed by what to do - depending on where you are.

No, California traffic is just so stationary that it devolves into zipper merging ... sort of.

Zipper merging also generally only works when there is movement after the zipper. In many places in the US, the point where a zipper is occurring is followed by more traffic injection (um, there was was a reason for losing that lane, after all, and it was probably the fact that there was a new lane coming in) in less than a mile and any advantage is lost.

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

#195

Post by bsder »

teamonkey wrote: post #147
o0-0o wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is localized. The UK is much smaller, and therefore has less regional tastes about merging. In the Midwest and Eastern seaboards of the US you have polite and diverse people respectively. In California, you have experienced drivers. California works like the zipper merge already, and the rest of the US is flummoxed by what to do - depending on where you are.

I don't think it's so much about being smaller, more that there is only one set of rules for the whole country and those rules are more strongly enforced. Also, from what I can tell, the driving exam is far more rigorous in the UK.

Speeds in the UK are way slower than the US, and cars are way more expensive to run in the UK than the US.

Consequently, everybody and their dog doesn't expect to drive a car in the UK.

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

#196

Post by TheCoelacanth »

korzun wrote: post #150
DanBC wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In general every situation where I had to steer out of the way was caused by an older person who should NOT be driving. Do you have any statistics about driving accidents? Because all the stats I've seen show that older drivers are safer better drivers than young people, and this is especially true when comparing to young males under the age of 26.

Those statistics do not include cases where older person switches lanes into your car and you luckily avoid it. They also do not include cases where other people cause accidents and go on their marry way while you wreck your vehicle avoiding them. Like the other poster stated, it's young (novice drivers) and old drivers. It's also a scientific fact that you reaction time decreases as you grow older. >Because all the…

> This is largely due to increased susceptibility to injury and medical complications among older drivers rather than an increased tendency to get into crashes

So it's not that they are more likely to get into crashes, it's that they are more likely to die from the injuries that a crash causes while a younger person would survive if they received the same injuries.

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

#197

Post by tedsanders »

simias wrote: post #171
tedsanders wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, the correct way to zipper merge is to reduce your speed to the traffic beside you and then merge at the end. The whole reason zipper merging is efficient and safe is that both lanes of traffic are moving at similar speeds, making merging quick and easy. If you zoom past the other lane of traffic, you are actually worse than the early mergers in terms of safety and efficiency. Edit: For those of you downvoting…

You need to have the same speed at the point of merging, not while you're just driving 1km of empty lane leading to the merge point. It would be very silly to drive at a snail pace in an empty lane for no reason. You just have to slow down to the other lane's pace when reaching the merge point. What would be the point of matching speed with the other lane when you're not actually about to merge?

There are three reasons to drive slowly in the right lane.

(1) It's safer (matching speeds reduces odds of and damage from collisions)

(2) It's more efficient (If you zoom ahead, there is a nonzero chance that drivers in the left lane will be annoyed and attempt to block you, reducing global efficiency. Note that there's no loss in going slow since the bottleneck is the constraint. As a result, going slow can only gain and never cost.)

(3) It's fairest (people who arrive at the same time will leave at the same time, regardless of their lane)

Another comment lays out my logic further: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8084137

I know it feels silly to drive slowly in the right lane, but it's safer, more efficient, and fairest. Why wouldn't you do it?

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

#198

Post by drcube »

peeters wrote: post #81
nardi wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Option 1 leads to "no, after you " behavior, steers two cars directly at each other, and probably would be a disaster.

Speaking about educating drivers, I wish we could just kill that mentality once and for all. It drives me crazy when someone obviously beats me to a stop sign, then waves me through as though they're doing me a favor. No my friend, you're just making it slower for both of us by not following the established rules of the road. Thankfully my city is replacing as many stop signs as possible with traffic circles, where y…

> you'd have to be a complete idiot to yield to someone who got there after you.

You'd be surprised. Or else the vast majority of drivers around here are complete idiots. They basically treat traffic circles like a confusing 4-way stop sign. It's infuriating.

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

#199

Post by tedsanders »

nhaehnle wrote: post #172
tedsanders wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your charitable interpretation of my comment, but in fact I don't think it is ridiculous to drive slowly in the right lane. I really do think that's the correct strategy. Even if the second lane is free, it's safer and more efficient to match speeds with the first lane. And shouldn't we take actions that maximize safety and efficiency? Note that there is no global gain from speeding down the right lane,…

Hmm, probably we don't disagree by much anyway. Perhaps it's clearer if we put some numbers to it: Suppose that the occupied lane is doing stop-and-go (due to the natural waves occurring in traffic), with a maximum speed of 20km/h. What should the speed be for somebody in the unoccupied lane? Certainly 80km/h is far too much. On the other hand, it also doesn't make sense (IMHO) to come to a complete stop in the free…

If the left lane is going an average speed of 10 km/h, then I believe the right lane should drive at 10 km/h. Doing otherwise is being selfish and unsafe, with no global benefit. It feels weird, but it makes the most sense as far as I can reason.

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

#200

Post by beejiu »

bsder wrote: post #195
teamonkey wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's so much about being smaller, more that there is only one set of rules for the whole country and those rules are more strongly enforced. Also, from what I can tell, the driving exam is far more rigorous in the UK.

Speeds in the UK are way slower than the US, and cars are way more expensive to run in the UK than the US. Consequently, everybody and their dog doesn't expect to drive a car in the UK.

I'm not sure we drive any slower in the UK. A residential road is 30mph (very rarely 20mph), country roads are 60mph and arterial and motorways are 70 mph. That seems comparable with speeds in the US.
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