Bob CollinsWe’re about to head out for another summer weekend, and there’s plenty of road construction to encounter. The atmosphere is right to try out the “zipper merge.”
MnDOT, last month, created a video to try to get people to change the way they merge from two lanes to one…
Here’s the problem: People see “lane closed ahead” and they automatically change lanes. It’s like planning for retirement. You don’t wait until the last minute to do it, right? Why should merging be any different?
Then, once you merge, some jerk goes racing by in the soon-to-be closed lane and scoots ahead of everyone who had the good sense to plan ahead. Face it, you silently wish that whoever is up ahead won’t let them in.
But the “jerk” is the one who is merging correctly. And we early-adopters are the ones who are actually messing things up.
The problem is not enough people know this so in order to merge correctly, you have to be willing to absorb the grief from other drivers.
Try it out this weekend and report back here how it went.
