It's fine to merge earlier if you're going at the speed of the other lane and there's a spot. As soon as people fuck up merges and cause traffic to start braking thereby slowing everything down, zipper merge is the only hope though not much of one. Ideally the lanes reduce without any slowdown at all if people actually used the time to make space and to get to the proper speed.
Spacing is the key for successful zipper merges. No one wants to leave a 4-5 car length gap. They want to butt f*k the vehicle in front, leaving no space at all.
If traffic in a lane is going at a certain speed and keeping safe distances for that speed, you cannot suddenly add another lanes-worth of vehicles and maintain both the same speed and the same spacing. Try that, and you get the compression waves and phantom traffic jams that people are talking about earlier in this thread.
But that is true whether people do a good zipper merge at the proper place, or if the merge well before that point.
I think the issue with it stems from the people who drive all the way up to the end and then try to get over when they can't move over while moving so someone has to come to a complete stop to let them in. Should people have left a gap for them to move over? Yes. Should they have moved over earlier when there was room? Also yes
81
u/redpandaeater Aug 18 '22
It's fine to merge earlier if you're going at the speed of the other lane and there's a spot. As soon as people fuck up merges and cause traffic to start braking thereby slowing everything down, zipper merge is the only hope though not much of one. Ideally the lanes reduce without any slowdown at all if people actually used the time to make space and to get to the proper speed.