You can't do any better than that?
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@asuffield said:
@Quinnum said:
The real WTF is the term 'undertaking'.
Undertaking is preparing a corpse for a funeral.That's a relatively accurate description of what people do when they pass on the wrong side. Admittedly it's a bit earlier in the "preparation" than the word is usually used to describe.
Life pretty much leads to death in all recorded circumstances. So, I'd say that life is quite an undertaking. ;)
I'll get my coat.
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@Quinnum said:
Try again. Strangely, words sometimes have more than one meaning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undertaking_(Driving)The real WTF is the term 'undertaking'.
Undertaking is preparing a corpse for a funeral.Overtaking is passing somebody, regardless of the side you do it.
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@misguided said:
@Random832 said:
You’re supposed to merge WHEN the lane ends, not half a mile or two
miles or whatever before the first sign indicating it will.This sentence is contradictory.
Your defense of using the empty lane and calling anyone who waits there turn a "stupid asshole" makes it clear that you consider "WHEN the lane ends" to be when there are pylons or a sawhorse across it and you can physically drive no farther. But then you say "half a mile or two miles or whatever before the first sign indicating it will", which no one is suggesting.
Yes. This is what YOU are suggesting. That people should merge as soon as they see the first sign (which is going to be well before they reach even that sign)
@misguided said:Most of the time, at least here, there's signage indicating that the lane is ending long before the lane actually ends.
Yes, there is a sign there. But it does NOT mean you are supposed to merge “now” or “soon”. Let me show you a picture:
I’m in the blue car. I want to make that right turn up ahead. You’re in the red car, stopping people from going ahead in the right lane (i don’t know if this was you who said they’d do that, but someone did). THIS is how your behavior contributes to congestion. Some states actually post signs saying you should wait until the lane closes before merging, because people like you are too stupid to realize that makes traffic flow better. @misguided said:If you can see that sign, you can and should respond to it. Which is what the second half of your sentence implies, and does NOT defend the assholes who zoom past that sign, and a second sign if there is one, hit the breaks right at the cones and force their way over. That's just bad behavior.
There's no overall efficiency improvement from stacking up two lines for one output unless space is at a premium,
space is ALWAYS at a premium. Making the queue longer means that EVERYONE is waiting further back, even back past the last ten exits. It means that there are hundreds more cars still on the road because they haven’t gotten to their exit yet.
@misguided said:But I'm talking about being up against a hard constant median with nowhere to go for a good 10 cars and having someone decide their time is more important than those other 10 carloads of people and, for lack of another equally apt term, "budding" those ten people in line.
Those ten cars should be five in each lane in the first place. That they chose not to makes them assholes, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with trying to fix it. IDEALLY, it should be the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth person in “line”, in that order, that switch lanes. If they choose not to, there’s nothing wrong with the eleventh doing it. Just means he’s smarter than them.
This is backed up by actual studies, and is the law in, at least, the state of Pennsylvania.
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@MasterPlanSoftware said:
So THIS is what it looks like inside the mind of one of those self-important drivers that likes to risk everyone else's life by cutting people off at the last second...
Now, in what way is driving at or below the speed limit in an open lane risking ANYONE's lives? Or are you attributing to my position behavior other than what i have advocated? I could just as well say that the people in the left lane who tailgate through the merge to jump ahead of the guy in the right lane are risking everyone's lives (they're definitely the ones cutting people off and contributing to road rage) by breaking the zipper merge rules. they are the ones queue-jumping. It's supposed to go left, right, left, right, left, right.
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@Random832 said:
@MasterPlanSoftware said:
So THIS is what it looks like inside the mind of one of those self-important drivers that likes to risk everyone else's life by cutting people off at the last second...
Now, in what way is driving at or below the speed limit in an open lane risking ANYONE's lives? Or are you attributing to my position behavior other than what i have advocated?
I am sorry, but I cannot find anywhere in my post where I mention speed...
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@MasterPlanSoftware said:
I am sorry, but I cannot find anywhere in my post where I mention speed...
You haven't explained how anything I do or anything I have advocated people should do risks anyone's life. So, you either irrationally believe that there is something especially dangerous about driving normally in an open lane, or you think i've advocated slamming on the gas pedal to get to the head of the lane at ten or more mph above the limit, then on the brakes at the merge point.
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@Random832 said:
@MasterPlanSoftware said:
I am sorry, but I cannot find anywhere in my post where I mention speed...
You haven't explained how anything I do or anything I have advocated people should do risks anyone's life. So, you either irrationally believe that there is something especially dangerous about driving normally in an open lane, or you think i've advocated slamming on the gas pedal to get to the head of the lane at ten or more mph above the limit, then on the brakes at the merge point.
I don't need to explain anything. I think we have all seen the people who do what you are advocating. I see them ducking into lanes right before they close, causing people to slam on the brakes, and causing accidents on a regular basis. (Nothing like 5 miles of traffic because one idiot wanted to wait until the last minute, and took out another car, closing the lane/exit/highway)
I see it all the time here, and have seen it plenty in PA as well. Your ideas might be applicable in a perfect world, where proper spacing is maintained, speeds are matched, etc. However, none of us lives in a perfect world. Most of the people arguing with you have accepted the reality we dwell in, now it is your turn.
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@MasterPlanSoftware said:
@Random832 said:
@MasterPlanSoftware said:
I am sorry, but I cannot find anywhere in my post where I mention speed...
You haven't explained how anything I do or anything I have advocated people should do risks anyone's life. So, you either irrationally believe that there is something especially dangerous about driving normally in an open lane, or you think i've advocated slamming on the gas pedal to get to the head of the lane at ten or more mph above the limit, then on the brakes at the merge point.
I don't need to explain anything. I think we have all seen the people who do what you are advocating. I see them ducking into lanes right before they close, causing people to slam on the brakes, and causing accidents on a regular basis. (Nothing like 5 miles of traffic because one idiot wanted to wait until the last minute, and took out another car, closing the lane/exit/highway)
I see it all the time here, and have seen it plenty in PA as well. Your ideas might be applicable in a perfect world, where proper spacing is maintained, speeds are matched, etc. However, none of us lives in a perfect world. Most of the people arguing with you have accepted the reality we dwell in, now it is your turn.
Well, it cuts the other way too "if the assholes in the left lane would wait for their turn to go (turns defined via the zipper merge principle), the guy on the right wouldn't have to 'force' his way in." - whose fault is it? If you slam on your brake because you just ASSUMED that you'd be allowed to go out of turn, and were proven wrong, is it really the fault of the guy who went in front of you, when it was, in fact, his turn? If the guy in front of you in your lane just went, and there are people waiting in both lanes (no matter how or when the people in the other lane arrived), you shouldn't have to slam on your brake because you shouldn't have been moving in the first place, since it's not your turn to go.
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I'm not suggesting people merge before the last turnoff before the narrowing. But once you're past the last turnoff before the narrowing, you should merge. Otherwise why bother putting up signs? If you're supposed to merge right where the lane ends, you don't need any further notice than when you can see the lane ending in front of you. (unless you're going 100 km in a 60 km zone, which comes back to the thesis wherein you're a dick.)
I'm also definitively 100% NOT the one advocating lane-straddling, that's really damn annoying and basically sinking to the level of anyone blasting by.
Unless, of course, you're high in a stolen 12 year old van and are looking to joyride or smash some crap. Buuut if you're stealing cars you're most likely the asshole in the closed lane ;)
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@misguided said:
I'm not suggesting people merge before the last turnoff before the narrowing.
Even though my image didn't illustrate this, merging early causes delays even before the merge point. Everyone is (say) 20 car-lengths further back, even back past the next TEN turnoffs, with more people on the road than otherwise would have been (due to not being at their turnoff yet) at each one.
But once you're past the last turnoff before the narrowing, you should merge. Otherwise why bother putting up signs?
It's supposed to go left, right, left, right, whether you like how the car on the right got there or not. If you're on the left, and the car in front of you just went through, it's not your turn until one car from the right lane goes, and you are the one queue-jumping. You wouldn't have to slam on the brakes when the other guy (whose turn it is) tries to go if you'd just waited like you were supposed to.
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@bstorer said:
@PJH said:
@belgariontheking said:
Rear-end the twats who don't move out of the overtaking lane when the inside lane is clear, and force you have to undertake them to pass.any others?
Take out the the lorry driver who thinks it's acceptable to attempt to overtake that other lorry doing .01 mph less than they are. When there are only two lanes.
"Lorry?" "Overtaking lane?" Quit making terms up.
@misguided said:
There is a special circle of hell (metaphorically speaking at least) reserved for people who can see that the lane ahead is ending, and ignore the signage and the giant line of cars traveling in the open lane, and ZOOM AHEAD in the lane that's going to close right up to the end of it and then FORCE THEIR WAY IN past all the cars that were not douches and were waiting their turn like ordinary citizens.
And that's why in those situations I straddle both lanes. My dickery cannot be bested.
People out by my place wouldn't even notice you as they drive past. Where I live we have a two lanes merge into one deal, and morons zoom up the closing lane until neither lane is moving faster than 5 mph, and then the utter assholes (as opposed to the idiots who just can't think) zoom up the shoulder outside the closing lane so that they can get to the end, push past the morons and push into the single remaining lane.
I can kind of see justifying the "drive to the very last possible foot of lane then merge" mentality, but how the hell do you justify something like that?
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@PJH said:
@Quinnum said:
Try again. Strangely, words sometimes have more than one meaning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undertaking_(Driving)The real WTF is the term 'undertaking'.
Undertaking is preparing a corpse for a funeral.Overtaking is passing somebody, regardless of the side you do it.
Once again, we come to an argument often encountered on these forums re usage of words: Just because people use it that way doesn't make it correct.
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@Quinnum said:
@PJH said:
@Quinnum said:
Try again. Strangely, words sometimes have more than one meaning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undertaking_(Driving)The real WTF is the term 'undertaking'.
Undertaking is preparing a corpse for a funeral.Overtaking is passing somebody, regardless of the side you do it.
Once again, we come to an argument often encountered on these forums re usage of words: Just because people use it that way doesn't make it correct.
IIRC the usual reply to that is that "language changes." Not that that makes it any more correct of course.
(Having performed a little more digging, the word isn't actually used in the Highway Code as I thought.)
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I believe the Highway department typically states you should merge at the first possible safe opportunity after the solid white line ends. The length of the merge lane is designed to accomidate the need for people coming from the point on to the highway sufficient time to accelerate so that they're moving at the speed of traffic. If you're moving at the speed of traffic and can safely merge then you should do so. People who merge prior to the end of the solid white line are just as bad as people who don't merge until the last imaginable moment regardless of when they could have merged.
Most backups occur because people pack-in too closely and don't allow the people in the merge lane to move over and not because people wait until the last moment to merge over. It's an idiotic display of self-importance. A good sample can be found here: http://amasci.com/amateur/traffic/seatraf.html
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Undertaking (as in passing on the inside) is a widely used term. It's not in the OED however.
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@m0ffx said:
Undertaking (as in passing on the inside
This is one thing I don't get at ALL about British usage. Why is the "inside" the side that is furthest away from the middle, and the "outside" the one closer to it?
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@Random832 said:
@m0ffx said:
Undertaking (as in passing on the inside
This is one thing I don't get at ALL about British usage. Why is the "inside" the side that is furthest away from the middle, and the "outside" the one closer to it?
I have NO IDEA. yes it is completely ridiculous.
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@Random832 said:
@m0ffx said:
Undertaking (as in passing on the inside
This is one thing I don't get at ALL about British usage. Why is the "inside" the side that is furthest away from the middle, and the "outside" the one closer to it?
Originated on racetracks, where all cars were going in a loop. The application to modern highways is essentially arbitrary. The lanes have to be called something...
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A cite from some research on the 'when to merge' question (the only study I could find after a quick search):
"If you can do it without slowing down very much, that allows the driver who's entering to enter at a higher speed," Davis said. "If they have to crawl along waiting for an opening, they slow down the other vehicles on the freeway."
Makes sense: more space means it is easier to merge safely and at a high speed. Another study I saw (too lazy to look it up) had the same somewhat non-intuitive findings regarding whether it is faster in general if cars drive close together (tailgate) or have a lot of space. Though adding car lengths between cars lengthens the line of cars, again, they found that traffic moves faster.As long as the early-merge cars move at more than twice the average speed of cars that need to stop to let late-mergers in, merging early is better--in my experience this is the case since once driver slamming on the brakes for one late merger stops a long line of cars. Same with tailgating: all it takes is one minor fenderbender and traffic backs up for miles, ruining any speed gain that tailgating might provide.
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@antonrojo said:
A cite from some research on the 'when to merge' question (the only study I could find after a quick search):
"If you can do it without slowing down very much, that allows the
driver who's entering to enter at a higher speed," Davis said. "If they
have to crawl along waiting for an opening, they slow down the other
vehicles on the freeway."
Makes sense: more space means it is easier to merge safely and at a high speed. Another study I saw (too lazy to look it up) had the same somewhat non-intuitive findings regarding whether it is faster in general if cars drive close together (tailgate) or have a lot of space. Though adding car lengths between cars lengthens the line of cars, again, they found that traffic moves faster.Yes, it does move faster, in terms of absolute miles per hour. But people are likely spending longer in line, and not only is the line longer due to the extra space, there are also more cars in it who haven't made their turn (nevermind those who are in the line that would, with the shorter "line", still be in freely flowing traffic) - it also seems like that study didn't even consider the disruptive effect on side streets / traffic whose destination is side streets
As long as the early-merge cars move at more than twice the average speed of cars that need to stop to let late-mergers in, merging early is better--in my experience this is the case since once driver slamming on the brakes for one late merger stops a long line of cars.
They wouldn't have to slam the brakes if they hadn't presumed they could go in the first place. Your argument against tailgating is valid: clearly the best solution is to have cars in both lanes, spaced far enough apart that they can merge immediately once the lane closes
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@Random832 said:
They wouldn't have to slam the brakes if they hadn't presumed they could go in the first place.
I'm going to go ahead and stop you here. This is not the first time you've mentioned that the people already in the lane do not have the right to continue to drive in that lane uninhibited. I disagree. I think that if I am in a lane, moving along at a clip of (let's say) 30+ mph, then someone who's lane is ending and is at a full stop (or going say 10 mph) has no right to merge into my lane because he thinks it's some "zipper rule." I shouldn't have to slam on my brakes because he didn't think to merge earlier. OR the merger should merge and get up to a speed at which I don't have to slam on my brakes.
However, if ALL traffic is stopped (or going say 10 mph), you have a more valid point. Crowded parking lots right after school, work, a concert, or sporting event, for instance, but the "zippers" apply at the intersections.
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@belgariontheking said:
@Random832 said:
They wouldn't have to slam the brakes if they hadn't presumed they could go in the first place.
I'm going to go ahead and stop you here. This is not the first time you've mentioned that the people already in the lane do not have the right to continue to drive in that lane uninhibited. I disagree. I think that if I am in a lane, moving along at a clip of (let's say) 30+ mph, then someone who's lane is ending and is at a full stop (or going say 10 mph) has no right to merge into my lane because he thinks it's some "zipper rule." I shouldn't have to slam on my brakes because he didn't think to merge earlier. OR the merger should merge and get up to a speed at which I don't have to slam on my brakes.
However, if ALL traffic is stopped (or going say 10 mph), you have a more valid point. Crowded parking lots right after school, work, a concert, or sporting event, for instance, but the "zippers" apply at the intersections.
You shouldn't be going 30+mph unless there is enough space between you and the car in front of you for someone to merge anyway, that's what's commonly known as "tailgating", and it's rude for reasons that go beyond your antisocial goal of keeping people from merging. If there is not enough room in front of you for them to merge without you slowing down, you do have to slow down to let them in because the zipper rule does apply. I'd assumed this whole time that we were all talking about everyone only going 5-10mph because those are the only speeds at which it is legitimate to be in such a configuration at all. Furthermore, you'd only be "slamming" on the brakes if you had indeed floored the accelerator to start from a stop to try to chase the person in front of you through the merge without letting the person in the other lane in - if you were going 30+mph the whole time as you suggest, you'd only need to slow down slightly (if at all) to allow the zipper merge to work, which is not "slamming on the brakes" except in the imagination of someone who doesn't want to play by the rules.
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@Random832 said:
@belgariontheking said:
@Random832 said:
They wouldn't have to slam the brakes if they hadn't presumed they could go in the first place.
I'm going to go ahead and stop you here. This is not the first time you've mentioned that the people already in the lane do not have the right to continue to drive in that lane uninhibited. I disagree. I think that if I am in a lane, moving along at a clip of (let's say) 30+ mph, then someone who's lane is ending and is at a full stop (or going say 10 mph) has no right to merge into my lane because he thinks it's some "zipper rule." I shouldn't have to slam on my brakes because he didn't think to merge earlier. OR the merger should merge and get up to a speed at which I don't have to slam on my brakes.
However, if ALL traffic is stopped (or going say 10 mph), you have a more valid point. Crowded parking lots right after school, work, a concert, or sporting event, for instance, but the "zippers" apply at the intersections.
You shouldn't be going 30+mph unless there is enough space between you and the car in front of you for someone to merge anyway, that's what's commonly known as "tailgating", and it's rude for reasons that go beyond your antisocial goal of keeping people from merging. If there is not enough room in front of you for them to merge without you slowing down, you do have to slow down to let them in because the zipper rule does apply. I'd assumed this whole time that we were all talking about everyone only going 5-10mph because those are the only speeds at which it is legitimate to be in such a configuration at all. Furthermore, you'd only be "slamming" on the brakes if you had indeed floored the accelerator to start from a stop to try to chase the person in front of you through the merge without letting the person in the other lane in - if you were going 30+mph the whole time as you suggest, you'd only need to slow down slightly (if at all) to allow the zipper merge to work, which is not "slamming on the brakes" except in the imagination of someone who doesn't want to play by the rules.
belgariontheking has it right. Instead of merging with the traffic at the speed its flowing, which should be possible given the signage way back there, they go right to the end slow down, and make someone stop for them. If we are all stopped together at a light and your lane ends right after it, sure I'm not going to be right on the next guys bumper and you can change lanes. If you chose, however, to speed up, pass everyone, then sit there expecting us to accomodate you? No, I'm not going to go out of my way because you don't know how to merge.
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@Random832 said:
You shouldn't be going 30+mph unless there is enough space between you and the car in front of you for someone to merge anyway,
I gotta call bullshit on you again. I leave 2-3 car lengths between me and the car in front at about 30 mph, which is more than most people leave. Perfectly fine, I can slam on my brakes if something happens to the car in front of me. That's about 44 feet/second. With an average car length of 15 feet, I could close three car lengths in one second. Who's going to have time to merge? A car would have to get into my lane and up to speed in about a half a second, which is impossible from a dead stop.
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@misguided said:
@Random832 said:
You’re supposed to merge WHEN the lane ends, not half a mile or two miles or whatever before the first sign indicating it will.
This sentence is contradictory.
Your defense of using the empty lane and calling anyone who waits there turn a "stupid asshole" makes it clear that you consider "WHEN the lane ends" to be when there are pylons or a sawhorse across it and you can physically drive no farther. But then you say "half a mile or two miles or whatever before the first sign indicating it will", which no one is suggesting. Most of the time, at least here, there's signage indicating that the lane is ending long before the lane actually ends. If you can see that sign, you can and should respond to it. Which is what the second half of your sentence implies, and does NOT defend the assholes who zoom past that sign, and a second sign if there is one, hit the breaks right at the cones and force their way over. That's just bad behavior.
As for the bank analogy, if you’re waiting in one line, and the other line's empty, do you bitch at the person who decides to go in the shorter line? There are TWO lines, just because you’re too ignorant to see that doesn’t mean that the people who use the other line are doing anything wrong..
Uh...
That's not a sensical metaphor at all.
I think you don't understand how to apply metaphors.
If there are two lines that are actually open, it means there are two tellers, which would be akin to having two lanes open.
If there is only one lane open at the end, that means every car has to go through a single point, which would be akin to having two lines for one teller. And I've never been in a bank or any queue anywhere that looked like that. It makes zero sense. Actually the only place I've seen a MI-SO relationship in real life is at a chair lift on a ski hill, where the lines are split up not into equal lines for the purposes of making the queue take up a smaller space, but split up into different group sizes so that triples can take a chair together and doubles can be paired with singles and so on, because the more full chairs the faster everyone gets up the hill. But even in that case, though there's one chair, there's three or more spots to fill, whereas there's still only one space for a car to go through at a time in our scenario. There's no overall efficiency improvement from stacking up two lines for one output unless space is at a premium, and perhaps if the lane that doesn't end has other turnoffs before the lane that doesn't end, that's a weak but valid point... But I'm talking about being up against a hard constant median with nowhere to go for a good 10 cars and having someone decide their time is more important than those other 10 carloads of people and, for lack of another equally apt term, "budding" those ten people in line.
I believe a geek metaphor would be two packet queues in a router that has only one output port.With the tiny difference that car drivers are not as cooperative as packets ...
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I will have to agree with Random832, i drive a certain stretch of road everyday where this happens, it's a 2 lane merging into 1, and all the cars and trucks stick to 1 lane only. Keeping the other lane wide open. So when i pass all the cars by driving on the open lane until the zipper sign, and then signal that i want to merge the assholes start to close the spaces between their cars. In such situations you sometimes just have to cut in front of a car to not have to wait there all day. This has nothing to do with being rude, it's just the result of people not understanding how its supposed to work.
And bringing up imaginative examples where for some reasons the packed side of the road is able to do 30mph and the guy on the merger road is going way slower is just stupid and childish. That's not what random832 is talking about. Nor is talking about a fictive asshole who slams his car at high speed in between a slow moving lane.
There's just a big group of drivers that just hates to be overtaken, besides the fact that there going slower or like with the zipper example when its the way it works.
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The issue requires observation and analysis. Both sides are correct, depending on varying circumstances.
The underlying goals are the same, in order of importance: safety, fairness, efficiency and convenience. Therefore, the issue comes down to an objective analysis of which merge strategies best fulfill these requirements.
Straightforward observation shows that there are two relevant traffic states that determine the optimal merge strategy: the first is when traffic is moving fast enough that there is sufficient space between cars to make arbitrary merging safe and efficient; the second is when traffic is moving slowly enough that the separation between cars is too small to afford arbitrary merging. There is the additional complexity that the traffic state can change abruptly from fast enough to too slow.
In the first case, a forced merge (merging into the unblocked lane at the last possible moment) is manifestly less safe than merging with sufficient cushion to choose an optimal, safe opportunity to merge.
The second case, however, is more problematic: By definition, the separation between cars is too small to *ever* permit a "safe" merge. This speed varies by locality; in Northern California, it is common to see vehicles traveling at 50 MPH (in a 65 MPH zone) with only two car lengths between them; three or four car lengths seems the minimum to afford safe arbitrary merges. (The obvious lack of safety of such habits are beyond the scope of this post). Since arbitrary merges are unsafe, a specific place must be established for forced merges. The obvious place to establish a forced merge is the choke point, the location where the lane ends.
There is an important difference between expected and unexpected lane closures. When a lane closure is expected (e.g. the roadway is built to narrow from three lanes to two), drivers should know the lane will end and merge at the first point where they determine that the traffic has fallen even a little below maximum safe speed; anyone who persists in the closing lane past that point is acting stupidly and/or unfairly to no good purpose. Even if the traffic is moving very slowly past the choke point, since you know (or should know) that there is a choke point, for the sake of fairness you should merge early, and leave the lane that will end empty.
The only exception is when drivers enter the roadway at a point where traffic has already slowed down to the point where arbitrary merges are unsafe. In this case, these drivers should proceed in their lane to the choke point and merge in "zipper" fashion. Drivers already on the roadway should not employ the lane where new drivers enter.More slack should be granted for unexpected lane changes (e.g. accidents and road work). Even when the lane closure is marked, drivers have a lot of information to process and not much time to do it in, and 'tis a sad fact that cognitive faculties are not equally distributed. In such cases, it should be expected that a substantial number of drivers are simply not going to get clued in soon enough to merge early; a zipper merge at the choke point is inevitable. If you are clued in, you may make at most one lane change (if you can do so safely) to the lane you think will be fastest, and then expect and permit a zipper merge at the choke point.
A special circle of hell should be reserved for drivers who employ *exit* lanes to advance past substantially slowed traffic in the continuing lanes. (There are *three* such lanes on the San Francisco approach to the Bay Bridge, one monument among many to the WTF stupidity of California's civil engineers). There is no justification whatsoever for remaining in these lanes beyond the first indication that the lane will become an exit lane, unless you actually exit.
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@stratos said:
I will have to agree with Random832, i drive a certain stretch of road everyday where this happens, it's a 2 lane merging into 1, and all the cars and trucks stick to 1 lane only. Keeping the other lane wide open. So when i pass all the cars by driving on the open lane until the zipper sign, and then signal that i want to merge the assholes start to close the spaces between their cars. In such situations you sometimes just have to cut in front of a car to not have to wait there all day. This has nothing to do with being rude, it's just the result of people not understanding how its supposed to work.
We don't have 'zipper signs.' Maybe this makes this whole argument moot, since we are arguing about completely different traffic control. We have one sign that says your lane is ending. Then the same sign again about 60 ft from where the lane ends. Then its just you and a dotted line trying to change lanes at the last possible minute. Since you have to cross a dotted line, doesn't that mean you definitely don't have the right of way?
If you were merging onto a freeway, would you wait until your lane was about to exit back out to another road to actually change lanes onto the freeway? Or, as you are driving would you look for a space, get up to speed and get into that space. Its the same situation, the lane you are in is not going where you have to be, so you find the easiest and safest way to get into the lane you need.
@The Barefoot Bum said:
A special circle of hell should be reserved for drivers who employ *exit* lanes to advance past substantially slowed traffic in the continuing lanes. (There are *three* such lanes on the San Francisco approach to the Bay Bridge, one monument among many to the WTF stupidity of California's civil engineers). There is no justification whatsoever for remaining in these lanes beyond the first indication that the lane will become an exit lane, unless you actually exit.
How about driving on the shoulder of the road to get around traffic congestion? They just drive up the line of cars waiting for the light, and then someone must let them in again. Since when is the shoulder an extra lane for asshats?
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@The Barefoot Bum said:
Since arbitrary merges are unsafe, a specific place must be established for forced merges. The obvious place to establish a forced merge is the choke point, the location where the lane ends.
*whine* but that would mean he gets to pass me! */whine*
In all seriousness, this is the problem: assholes who see it as some sort of personal affront for someone to merge in front of them rather than behind them.
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@Random832 said:
@The Barefoot Bum said:
Since arbitrary merges are unsafe, a specific place must be established for forced merges. The obvious place to establish a forced merge is the choke point, the location where the lane ends.
*whine* but that would mean he gets to pass me! */whine*
In all seriousness, this is the problem: assholes who see it as some sort of personal affront for someone to merge in front of them rather than behind them.
You caught me, the reason I don't like slamming on my brakes when you try to change lanes right into the side of my car is because I'm jealous of you.
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@Jetts said:
How about driving on the shoulder of the road to get around traffic congestion?
That's a crime. Around here it's a "revoke your license and throw your arse in jail" crime. If it's not the same where you are, drive over your local politicians a few times.
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It occurs to me that we have belgariontheking to blame for the bulk (>75%) of this thread. That's one more thing he can discuss in therapy.
Oh, and I never felt like the people who take the closing lane until the end to be idiots; they're just huge assholes who want to cut in front of the people who merged early and safely. I know this because I do it all the time and I consider myself to be a huge asshole.
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@Pap said:
It occurs to me that we have belgariontheking to blame for the bulk (>75%) of this thread. That's one more thing he can discuss in therapy.
Oh, and I never felt like the people who take the closing lane until the end to be idiots; they're just huge assholes who want to cut in front of the people who merged early and safely. I know this because I do it all the time and I consider myself to be a huge asshole.
I commend your for your honesty...
...Asshole.
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@Pap said:
It occurs to me that we have belgariontheking to blame for the bulk (>75%) of this thread. That's one more thing he can discuss in therapy.
Oh, and I never felt like the people who take the closing lane until the end to be idiots; they're just huge assholes who want to cut in front of the people who merged early and safely. I know this because I do it all the time and I consider myself to be a huge asshole.
I also consider myself to be a huge asshole. Except on the road.
Also, after reading some of your posts about DC and Houston, I can't feel too bad about the traffic in Cincinnati anymore. You go! Keep on sucking more than us! Let's get some more posts about how your traffic in Chicago and wherever is bad.
</asshole>
<asshole>just kidding....
