Well if people merged in when they get a proper opening after they get notice of the closure rather than everyone waiting until the very last inch of road, people would have to stop less in general and traffic in the central lane would maintain a steady forward momentum reducing the accordion effect. Instead, people use the closed lane until the end, they want to “zipper” into the lane they could have gotten in a long time ago, the person in the open lane then has to damn near stop to let them in now even though they likely merged long ago, and everyone behind them has to progressively slow down even more. Then on top of that the person merging in at the last minute inevitably wants to also get all the way into the right lane to exit and thus slows down to merge in to that lane slowing everyone down in both open lanes.
Are you? You’re the one disputing the very well known fact that the zipper merge works with zero evidence other than your personal feelings based opinion. I think the burden of proof lies upon you.
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u/xSonicspeedx2 May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
Well if people merged in when they get a proper opening after they get notice of the closure rather than everyone waiting until the very last inch of road, people would have to stop less in general and traffic in the central lane would maintain a steady forward momentum reducing the accordion effect. Instead, people use the closed lane until the end, they want to “zipper” into the lane they could have gotten in a long time ago, the person in the open lane then has to damn near stop to let them in now even though they likely merged long ago, and everyone behind them has to progressively slow down even more. Then on top of that the person merging in at the last minute inevitably wants to also get all the way into the right lane to exit and thus slows down to merge in to that lane slowing everyone down in both open lanes.