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Comment by jimhefferon | Hacker News Reader

Where I live there is a very strong culture of politeness and kindness in driving. For instance, I often see (and do it myself) that someone has let a person in who is trying to pull out of a hard-to-leave business driveway, with no hope of reward, just out of a sense that other people have helped you out in the past so now it is your turn.

In a recent construction on my way to work they put in two lanes where there was one, which must merge within a hundred yards to get over a narrow bridge. Filling both lanes and zipping would increase the capacity at that location, no doubt. But few drivers do it. Are others worried, as I am, that it would be part of a change in the overall driving culture, normalizing cutting ahead?

That is, could zipping be a local optimization that leads to a global suboptimization, an overall decrease in how reasonable it is to drive around here?

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Same here (Scotland). I think the tendency to queue and not fill both lanes is out of a misplaced sense of fairness - you can't help but feel very judged if you run right up an empty right-hand lane all the way to a merge point. Because you really are queue jumping, even if it's the collective fault of all the drivers who created the queue in the first place.

It needs public education to get people over this suboptimal behaviour.

On a tangential note, what's up with everyone everywhere saying "my God, drivers in [where I am] are the absolute worst"? They can't all be right.

> They can’t all be right.

I think people just adjust the scale to what they actually see. Deveoping countries with a new car culture are probably objectively worse, but not many people go there and see what it’s like.

Norms change slowly and queueing is a strong social norm. But if it's actually tought in driving schools or even made into law then we can usually overcome it.

This is like how it's pretty natural to let people out of a lift or a train before you enter, regardless of who waited longest. It's just not efficient to get people in before others go out. So we are tought to let people out first.

> what's up with everyone everywhere saying "my God, drivers in [where I am] are the absolute worst"?

I think most of those people have not lived many places. My perception is that there are solid differences in driving culture between some cities. I found San Francisco traffic heavy, but with fairly courteous drivers. Vancouver same. Toronto was atrocious - lived there for ten years and never got used to the aggression and almost sociopathic attitude toward other drivers. Now I'm in Edmonton, where it's back to mostly OK - drivers here are a little more timid than other places but don't lean on their horn for every perceived slight or compromise the whole system to gain a 5 second advantage.

My completely unscientific take is that the most aggravating traffic comes when traffic gets dense enough to be a real irritant (I dunno - say maybe doubling a normal drive time between two destinations), but is still civil enough that most (say 90%) drivers are pretty polite and cooperative. That means that aggressive driving actually pays off, which makes it harder to take for people who don't zip past traffic in the turning lane only to forcefully merge back in.

yeah.. we have merge in turn here, the curved arrow on the road at the end of a lane means this. we also have text signs for "use both lanes" and "merge in turn"

but mostly people are not too keen to actually follow the rules.. i used to follow the pack, now i just follow the instructions and merge as late as possible. - probably this makes me an asshole

The way to avoid queue jumping is to match speeds, then zipper-merge when the lane ends.

I see the same throughout the US: everyone knows to alternate when a merge is required - and will even call this ‘zippering’ - but does not consistently (or often) do the throughput-maximizing practice of forcing this, by waiting until a merge is absolutely required.

Rather, people often try to avoid the ‘phase transition’ to a forced-merge flow-state for as long as possible, by ad-hoc merging earlier.

Partially that’s because the initial transition-to-zippering can be chaotic. Once established, zippering is easy to follow and well-respected. But, being the “first” to assert an alternating-right-to-merge depends on more judgement & recognition from a specific other driver.

" I often see (and do it myself) that someone has let a person in who is trying to pull out of a hard-to-leave business driveway, with no hope of reward"

You're not supposed to do that here (UK) except if you're already in slow moving traffic. You will fail your driving test for doing it. Not only that, but it's overall inefficient and causes traffic jams to form behind you if you slow down.

Like with people who hate zipper merging, sometimes what seems 'polite' isn't what's best for traffic.

I meant in slow, or waiting, traffic.

...or best for safety.

I've had a car written off and had a very minor pedal bike crash due to people "being polite" and gesturing people out of side-roads when not safe to do so.

I sometimes do sort-of-the-opposite which is, if I spot someone trying to join the road, and there's plenty of room ahead and behind me, I'll speed up ever-so-slightly to give them more chance of getting on. It's not often, and it's nuanced, but I like to think it's an efficiency positive!

Wow where is this place where drivers are courteous? It is the polar opposite in the UK, many drivers are selfish, aggressive and ignorant, especially around London & South East.

Vermont USA

Interesting, cause living in the South East I mostly find drivers that are quite polite on the roads (giving way, respecting crossings, stopping traffic to allow you to merge into the main road, etc).

I suppose it's a matter of expectations. Originally from Portugal so I'm used to seeing far worse people driving on the road.

That's not my feeling, I live in SE London and it's not that bad. There's just a lot of traffic, which makes it difficult and people can be pushy, but when I'm coming off a side road into a queue of traffic I'm usually let in OK and see the same courtesy given to others.

Conversely my mother lives near Worcester, and up there some of the drivers are insane. Nipping the wrong way round a roundabout, dashing across junctions on red. It's like they don't understand the concept of other traffic or sometimes even have actual control over the vehicle. Not everyone obviously, but enough to make my hair stand on end more than just once or twice.

Well said. UK drivers also pathologically avoid the outside/slow lane, exclusively use the middle or fast lane, and police don't fine people who do this. This leads to very miserable motorway driving and unnecessary queues.

>Where I live there is a very strong culture of politeness and kindness in driving.

What happened in America? Has anyone studied the cultural driving differences and why they may be that way? I'm really interested in american road rage and the who/what/where/when/why if anyone has any good resources, I'd love to look at them.

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