Drivers Who Merge at the Last Minute May Be Annoying, but They're Right

Perhaps one technique to help people do this would be to draw signs that suggest two lanes merging rather than one lane ending and one continuing.

So for example if you have some flashing lights to mark the end of the lane, also put some flashing lights on the side of the road next to the other lane. That way people think "these lights are on both sides of the road, squeezing us down into one lane" rather than "these lights mark the end of that lane, while this one continues"

This may be right when the lane you're merging out of is actually ending, but most of the time when people are forced to merge out of a lane it is because they're merging out of an exit lane. If you merge late out of an exit lane you're jamming up the exit lane. Don't do that.

This seems hypothetical and click-baity to me. In the parts of the US I've been to, here's what happens: most people do a (more or less) zipper merge "too soon" at a pretty good speed. A few people race past (too fast to merge), then stop (too slow to merge) at the last possible point. Everyone stops, again and again, to let them back in.

I think a perfect zipper merge requires matching speeds. I don't see how zooming ahead and stopping can help, and the article doesn't suggest any ideas.

This is just standard custom in the Northeast - lanes don't end, they merge. Keep moving while zippering, and the unfairness will be limited to a maximum of one car (someone who really wants to push it).

The downside is that the same philosophy is applied to eg exit only lanes. You'll get a 3-lane highway with a backed up simple exit, and only the leftmost lane is passable (with speed hindered by a constant worry that a stopped car will try to change lanes into you).

My method is a mix of both! I merge "pretty late" but not right at the limit so I stay polite, and then I put my car in the middle so you can't have an Audi driver try to wedge themselves and annoy everyone else.

Where's the limit? I'd say 10 cars or so, blink, if someone is unhappy about you, let them go, and find the next polite guy who realizes you are not trying to be a pain...

Majority (borderline everyone) here in Australia seems to be afraid to speed up to highway speed before merging and when the merge lane is short, they end up coming to a complete stop because they can't find a gap to for in, in time. Only if they understood basic physics: It's the delta of the speed that makes an accident dangerous not your absolute speed.

A lot more effort needs to go into road design too though. The best merge is the one you never even need to do.

For instance, I’ve seen ridiculous things like roads that open up two new lanes, only to remove BOTH of the new lanes within a half mile or so. (There wasn’t even an exit in between, just space they decided to use.) Predictably, that creates an insane cluster of traffic every single day in rush hour that could have been 100% avoided by simply not offering either of the bait lanes to begin with!

I also do not understand why so many merges have one tiny sign as the ONLY indication of a merge, sometimes over a very short distance. What, you just spent a few million on a road and you can’t afford 2 or 3 signs per merge? Put them up! Give people every chance to move. Surely it can’t hurt.

I've known about "zippering" for several years, and I know it makes sense. I'm still almost always an early merger though, because I still have an irrational anger at people zooming by to the front of the line. Despite knowing they're right, I do the wrong thing, because I know the other early mergers will most likely be angry at me. Although the dataset in my case is just me, it seems fixing the social expectations will be rather difficult, given that even people who know the right way to merge do the wrong thing. I'd change, but only if everyone else did too.

It also is more safe because there is only 1 obvious choice when you are the car behind the one trying to merge: slow down and let him in. Otherwise the car has nowhere else to go.

Still not 100% convinced, but if it's true this is an interesting example of common conception / human nature steering us in the wrong direction. This problem won't be an issue with driverless cars...