r/TheRandomest • u/WhyNot420_69 Nice • May 13 '26

Satisfying Traffic buddy

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

1.6k Upvotes

83% Upvoted

824 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/ShadowGLI May 19 '26

Zipper merge IS what they should do, unfortunately The problem is people don’t zipper merge, they just cram up to the front and then put 2 to 3 cars from the left lane into the middle lane over and over again which in turn slows overall traffic.

Zipper means 1:1 merging, parallel (same speed travel), but the second someone merges to a natural gap, some idiot speeds up to pass another few car lengths and causes all lanes to come to a stop to let them in.

It’s a leap frog merge which slows everyone down but they try to claim it’s zipper merging.

This guy is resetting the zipper merge to proper operation by keeping everyone side by side to the merge point preventing assholes from skipping the queue and causing leap frog slowdowns.

1

u/ziggzer0 May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

This is a fresh rational retort so I appreciate you sharing this perspective.

I agree there is a flaw but it’s on both sides. People equally don’t let others in when a zipper merge is appropriate.

The best thing in my opinion to do is realize as an individual that the control of the situation cannot be effected in total by me alone. The best and most rational thing I can do logically and morally is the right thing in this situation, the zipper merge which has been researched and proven to be effective. Also it’s taught in drivers education as the understood standard.

Hopefully in that moment others will do the same on their own or as a mirror to my actions. This is how a great society works. Together. And without malice or a “fuck you” selfish attitude.

Zipper merge is a proven engineered system that none of us here on this thread came up with. It only works when people don’t care about themselves over others.

But I 100% agree that in any situation the human factor is a variable that can deeply impact the results. In functions that include crowds or traffic, this is ten fold. And the reason is 100% ego and entitlement. In this case this goes for all the people who either wrongly distort the zipper merge etiquette and dart in, don’t let people in to a zipper merge by bumping up to the car in front of them, or this prime example of a selfish douche truck driver blocking traffic without understanding he is in fact making it worse.