I’ll start. Stopping distance.
My commute is 95 miles one way to work, so I see a lot of the highway, in the rural part of the US. This means traveling at 70+ mph (112km/h) for almost the entirety of the drive. The amount of other drivers on the road who follow behind someone else with less than a car’s length in front of them because they want to go 20+ over the speed limit is ridiculous. The only time you ever follow someone that close is if you have complete and absolute trust in them, and also understand that it may not even be enough.
For a daily drive, you likely need 2-3 car lengths between you at minimum depending on your speed to accurately avoid hitting the brakes. This doesn’t even take into account the lack of understanding of engine braking…
What concepts do you all think of when it comes to driving that you feel are not well understood by the public at large?
If I’m reading this right, I think you’re wrong.
If the two lanes are merging both lanes should be proceeding without changing lanes right up until the merge, then everyone does the zipper merge, taking turns.
The wrong thing to do: you see the merge up ahead, so move lanes right way. That results in the blocked/ending lane being wide open and the other lane being jam packed as everyone tried to get over before they are supposed to merge. Cars should be spread evenly over the two lanes, right up until zipper time.
Both wrong things happen all the time
Can’t argue with that.
You’re right that merging too soon creates traffic if it causes people to brake, but an ideal zipper merge doesn’t require anyone braking to let you in. The “space” in the lane that is ending is the space you should use to zipper. If you zoom to the front of it and stop, you fucked up and now everybody is going to suffer.
If you are going to merge to the right, for instance, you should look right and match speed so nobody has to slow down to let you in. If everyone is already stopped, by all means pull forward and wait your turn. But if the traffic on your right is moving, you should not be going faster than they are.
Likewise if you are in the lane that is continuing, you should drive slow enough that you don’t have to stop, and leave enough space in front of you to let a car in. If you zoom ahead to close the gap and then slam on the brakes, you’re the snowflake in an avalanche of traffic and you’re making it worse.
I think we’re in agreement. If everyone is already stopped, stay in the merging lane until the very end, and hopefully people on your lane stay behind you, and you can reset the zipper.
I think it’s fine to even maintain highway speed, right up until the merge, if lane that is ending is wide open. Gotta go somewhat slow and out wide, though because some dip won’t see you and will pull out suddenly, probably they just finished sending a sweet text and decided to pass.
I would suggest slowing down more gradually, but yeah the biggest problem with any strategy is that there’s always some dip who is too impatient to wait their turn.
If someone merges early and you zoom ahead and pass cars only to then merge, you aren’t doing a zipper merge anymore and have now slowed down the lane of traffic more because now more cars are entering the travel lanes than those cars already in the travel lanes are able to move forward. The zipper merge only really works if everyone does it and does it in the correct order.
The cycle can be reset if you do it right, and others follow.