Move To The Right...

On stretches of empty highway, I'll usually coast around 10 miles over the speed limit. I haven't had a ticket in 30 years of driving, so it seems to be a reasonable speed that doesn't unduly bother the officers. I will try to move over if I see somebody travelling at light speed behind me, but if there is a convoy of trucks and campers on the right all plodding along, warp drive guy is just going to have to wait until I've gotten past the convoy before I move over.

Quote: tringlomane

Missouri has also promoted this, but not very heavily. I tend to merge early and let one car zip in. I try to be patient and polite.

Good god, Tring could you be anymore Flanders? ;) Give that dickweed the horn and two fingers or one day you're gonna snap lol

Quote: MathExtremist

That may be true if you're at the merge point, but the highway is no place for you to lose control of your temper. And if you've got 1000 feet of empty highway in front of you because you decided to stop, put on your blinker, and merge into the bumper-to-bumper traffic, that's not the fault of the guy behind you, that's all you. Everyone behind you has to slam on their brakes and *that's* what causes accidents. Don't do this:

Do this instead:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/how-to-zip-through-summertime-road-construction-1.1340869

Those are great gifs, but in the zipper merge, watch just the thru lane traffic, not both. The 3rd car has to slow way down, and the 4th one (behind the white merger), comes.to a complete stop. I realize it's an illustration, but in the regular merge, all the cars stay moving, as they're already sorted. So what if the pavement stays empty? Everyone still has to fit the same bottleneck point.

A moving pilot is a happy pilot. Words to live by, if you're ATC. Or on the road with traffic. If you ever wonder why sometimes you get the scenic tour taxiing, btw, a lot of times it's the captain wanting to keep Butts in Seats. Lol...

Quote: beachbumbabs

Those are great gifs, but in the zipper merge, watch just the thru lane traffic, not both. The 3rd car has to slow way down, and the 4th one (behind the white merger), comes.to a complete stop. I realize it's an illustration, but in the regular merge, all the cars stay moving, as they're already sorted. So what if the pavement stays empty? Everyone still has to fit the same bottleneck point.

Except that intuition has been demonstrated false by other studies. It's not equivalently efficient to merge late vs. early -- shortly after the merge point, traffic often opens up as there are no more worries about merging traffic. The problem is human reaction time leads to a cascading effect of brakes and an accordion of cars slowing down. Merging closer to the merge point leads to a merge at higher average speeds and therefore less braking (and congestion). Driverless cars or central coordination would take care of a lot of that, but for now we need to rely on ourselves.

The real issue is that many people don't like "not having merged yet" -- when you have that anxious feeling because you're coming up to the end of the lane and you're not fully in a lane that won't disappear on you. If everyone could get over that anxiety -- and the related anger/jealousy when someone behind you passes to merge late while you're stopped trying to merge early -- we'd have a lot less congestion.

Quote: RogerKint

Good god, Tring could you be anymore Flanders? ;) Give that dickweed the horn and two fingers or one day you're gonna snap lol

Flanders, that's a good one...lol

But I do let the bird fly now and again if people are accidents waiting to happen.