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Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

This is not really specific to Germany. Zipping is also used in e.g. in The Netherlands and Belgium. It's been required by law in Belgium since 2014 and has been campaigned in The Netherlands since 1989 (apparently).

Also, having lived in Germany for five years and having been in 'Stau' for many times, Germans are also not terribly good/efficient at it. Typical problems: people switch to the lane that is supposed to zip when traffic is going faster, which is obviously counterproductive; and not leaving openings for people to zip.

It's probably still better, but it would be far more effective if all drivers would actually cooperate.

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> It's probably still better, but it would be far more effective if all drivers would actually cooperate.

That's the issue with most of solutions to traffic though.

In my experience, zipping as described here - when getting onto the highway - isn't done properly in NL. People still try and force themselves onto the highway or other lane as soon as possible. My colleague called it "eerste blokjesangst".

Just keep going for a bit further, use the whole road, and make sure you're matching speed with the rest of traffic, instead of making them (unknowingly) slow down to let you in. Also keep in mind you ARE allowed to overtake slower traffic on the on-ramp, so if there's a truck there, just pass it on the right, then merge.

Yep, can confirm - and it really irritates my Dutch wife.

One issue though is the same thing people have mentioned happens in the UK. Sometimes people just try really hard to stop you merging (large trucks seem especially guilty - maybe because many of them have driven from somewhere outside the NL). Most of the time I drive to the end and muscle in anyway, I think of it as expressing my newly approved "Dutch directness". :D

Usually, it is safer to merge behind the truck.

Not sure about that. Trucks generally have very powerful brakes and can stop faster than you'd expect. Crashing into the back of a truck can be catastrophic.

I'm a Part-time truck driver.

Truck do have big powerful brakes, (newer ones with disk-brakes are really awesome) but it still takes a LONG time/distance to slow/stop 80,000lbs from 100km/h. Kinetic energy is a real bitch.

There are videos of new volvos with 'automatic emergency braking' that is impressive to watch; but that isn't real-world.

In the real world during a 'panic stop' the trailer brakes lock up and the trailer starts bouncing. If you are lucky the tractor wheels don't lock up, but while you have slammed on the brakes, you are still steering and trying to avoid hitting anyone.

316ft for a car vs 524ft for a truck.[1] Almost twice the distance.

And that does NOT match my real-world experience. I'd say on average it takes 3x-4x the distance to stop a rig.

[1]https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/stopping-distances-for-com...

If you can’t stop a sedan faster than a truck can stop, you might consider taking a driving instruction course.

All the brakes can do is stop the wheels; you still have way more mass generally and momentum to actually get stopped.

While crashing can be catastrophic, I'd like to see some numbers on how many crashes into the backs of trucks were because the truck out-brake'd the smaller vehicle behind it as opposed to the smaller vehicle not paying attention.

The vehicles in the lane beside the truck do not have good visibility in the area in front of the truck. If a vehicle were overtaking the truck intending to immediately go to the lane with the truck, they'll not see the vehicle merging into the motorway from the other side. Thus the theory advises one that merging behind the truck is preferable.

I think your wrong. You should switch to the faster lane, zipping should make both lanes the same when optimized.

As self driving cars become more common I'm curious if we will see an opportunity to shift to more globally efficient cooperative behavior, or if the need to interop with human-driven cars means the same incentives and behavior patterns will persist.

It will be worse as human drivers learn to take advantage of the predictable risk-averse behavior of the self driving cars.

Stau is a bad example for most cases, but yes you will always get some who think they know better, even if they had to learn in the driving school that lane jumping makes it just slower for everyone.

Pretty much the rule in Austria too.

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