🔥 Yore driving, Deez roasted Nuts! 🔥
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Why is waiting in two full lines better than waiting in one, if the restriction is obviously further up the road?
Because the backup is half as long. Which means half as many entrances behind the backup are affected by it. Which means half as many surface streets leading into those entrances are affected by it. Which means people who don't even intend to get on the freeway aren't fucked by a backup happening 7 miles away in the opposite direction.
Read the PDF someone linked above, it explains this quite clearly: http://www.dot.state.mn.us/trafficeng/workzone/doc/When-latemerge-zipper.pdf
And yes, they have actual studied evidence that the "late merge" works better in congested traffic. Which is pretty much ALL traffic in the Seattle area.
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And it also saves gas.
Yes. My truck's sweet spots are 41 mph on gear 4, 56 gear 5, which makes it annoying to match the "I'm not going more than 5 mph above the limit" trolls.
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it's amusing to watch people rush forth for a mile only to be stopped because the city designers timed all the lights on that stretch of road to be the clock setter
I have the good fortune to live somewhere where city designers are convinced that "timing lights just doesn't work". I heard it secondhand, from a guy who heard it from the guy who's actually supposed to do it. I believe it though. There's a stretch of road where the speed limit's 35 MPH with lights every few blocks. I tried to time it once and discovered that you'd have to be going 45-50 MPH to ride the rolling green lights. There is no way they've even tried to time the lights properly. It's annoying as hell.
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So go ahead and start the trend of people using both lanes. But don't be the asshole who passes everyone in the left lane. Just match speeds.
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Why in the hell should I not pass them? Not my fault they're too dumb.
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So go ahead and start the trend of people using both lanes.
As is the correct thing to do.
But don't be the asshole who passes everyone in the left lane.
As long as that person isn't going fast enough to be unsafe, he's not an asshole. And I will be that person.
And remember: if you're upset about that person passing you, there's nothing stopping you from moving your car into the other lane and passing, too! Empower yourself!
Just match speeds.
I do that when it's time to merge, not a half-mile before.
Having read that PDF from the Minnesota DMV, I know two places on my commute where a "use both lanes" sign would REALLY help.
I actually wrote up an email about one of them a couple years ago, but of course nothing ever came of it. (Kind of a different situation, where there were two lanes into a freeway entrance but people would sit there and refuse to use their free right even if the opposing lane was doing left turns. YOU CAN TAKE THE FREE RIGHT, PEOPLE! THERE'S 100 CARS BEHIND YOU, TAKE THE FREE RIGHT!)
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There is no way they've even tried to time the lights properly.
Oh they timed it all right, just not in the way you would want. Like you mentioned, you have to be going 15-20+ the limit to actually make the lights in order, but this is by design.
Essentially, if they can assure that you stop at lights at a given rate, they can control traffic and ensure a constant flow. Unfortunately, that flow is typically "slow", but eventually our robot overlords will be here to save the day and we won't need to pay attention to that at all.
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Oh, I'm sure it's deliberate. Actually they have pretty heavy speed limit enforcement along that stretch of road, so my theory of why they did it is slightly different than yours.
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Well, for larger cities it's pretty much impossible to create timing lights unless you create it for one solitary stretch of road.
What they're aiming for now is actually something different - they may stop you in front of a traffic light and wait (for a reasonable time, of course) until a certain number of cars have pooled up behind you.
Then the system is supposed to create a green running light for this "caravan" of cars dynamically.
The text's in German but the videos are pretty self-explanatory.
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speed limit enforcement
Our area decided it wasn't raking in enough dough so they stopped the vans.
Still have the average-traffic measurement stats machines every quarter to tell the cops where good speed-trap locations are.Well, for larger cities it's pretty much impossible to create timing lights unless you create it for one solitary stretch of road.
Right, they're controlling the flow indirectly by assuring you stop at a particular interval.What they're aiming for now is actually something different - they may stop you in front of a traffic light and wait (for a reasonable time, of course) until a certain number of cars have pooled up behind you.
Then the system is supposed to create a green running light for this "caravan" of cars dynamically.
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It's more of a priority system - stopping 10 cars will create more exhaust than stopping one car.
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What they're aiming for now is actually something different - they may stop you in front of a traffic light and wait (for a reasonable time, of course) until a certain number of cars have pooled up behind you.
Then the system is supposed to create a green running light for this "caravan" of cars dynamically.
Yeah, naturally I might end up stopped by one or two of the lights. It's just really dumb when I'm stopped at every light.
for larger cities it's pretty much impossible to create timing lights unless you create it for one solitary stretch of road
Generally the major roads are far enough apart and set up to run either north/south or east/west. Timing lights could be done effectively for the routes that are used by the most traffic; side streets just end up having to wait before getting onto the main roads.
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Generally the major roads are far enough apart and set up to run either north/south or east/west. Timing lights can be done effectively for the routes that are used by the most traffic; side streets just end up having to wait.
Not in Germany, no. We don't have cookie-cutter cities with straight streets from a ruler.
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That's ok, at least Seattle's laid-out in a grid.
Oh.
Wait.
Seattle's laid out in THREE grids all at different angles and with different block sizes:
https://goo.gl/maps/F3JSF6bRWfM2
Which is almost worse than having no layout strategy at all.
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We don't have cookie-cutter cities with straight streets from a ruler.
That just makes the math a little more involved.
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And driving through it a nightmare, sometimes.
There's a reason why I prefer the subway and walking on foot when visiting the city center :)
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walking on foot
If only the places I needed to go could be swiftly navigated in this manner.
People were already yelling at me for driving less than 15 minutes regularly...
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Most of our cities here were actually designed by someone, so they're fairly regular. The side streets can be all screwy, but the main ones usually run fairly straight and in a grid. Like this:
You only run into really weird street layouts in old parts of cities that existed before they got their shit together and started producing something sane. Or if several neighboring cities were laid out on completely different grids and eventually they merged into one. Then you can end up with situations like blakey described.
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nothing stopping you from moving your car into the other lane and passing, too!
What? And miss a chance to be right, way back there in the line?
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[map]
That's frighteningly close to where I live....
It's a small world I suppose....
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I picked a largish city at random. I don't live in Phoenix.
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When I was only visiting Hamburg some years back (that was before cheap and abundant GPS and mapping solutions) I had to take someone to a hospital. Now, the youth hostel guy didn't have a real map, thus I had to make do with a photocopied page out of the Yellow Pages.
Which did not include the signage for one-way streets. Which in turn lead to a rather helix-like approach to the hospital - one-way streets everywhere.
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largish city at random
Lets just hope you don't pick a random phone number to dial then?
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It's common in the old parts of cities. The buildings were already established and the streets weren't wide enough to be utilized as two-way streets by modern vehicles.
However, since it's still laid out in a pretty nice grid pattern they've done the reasonable thing. Each street goes the opposite direction, so you never have to go more than a few blocks out of the way to find a street that goes in the direction you want to go.
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Why just me? If you're passing people then you're not zipper merging properly either.
If I'm passing people, I'm not at the zipper-merge point yet. (Lawrence on-ramp onto US101 during rush hour - on ramp: 65mph, 101: 10mph)
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Well, it's pretty much a given that you won't be able to pass people anymore upon reaching the merge point
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Well, it's pretty much a given that you won't be able to pass people anymore upon reaching the merge point
I wouldn't call that a troll :) It's where the natural zipper point occurs!
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which makes it annoying to match the "I'm not going more than 5 mph above the limit" trolls.
Those are nowhere near as annoying as the "I'm not going more than the limit in the passing lane" trolls.
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Those are nowhere near as annoying as the "I'm not going more than the limit in the passing lane" trolls.
Bad Idea: Getting into a one-up war on the Bad Ideas thread.... ;P
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I don't tend to get stuck in the theory of driving when I'm sat in a traffic jam averaging like 6mph
That's when I start to think a lot about that sort of thing, actually.
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And I'm over here trying to show you this black swan and you're like nope, that dude's an idiot
I'm fond as anyone of calling rhwyden an idiot, but he's right in this case.
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Zipper merge requires you to match speed with the other lane and find an opening. If you're passing instead of doing that then you're doing it wrong and fuck you asshole.
But why do it super early when it's not required? Why are you insisting ok an inefficient use of the available road?
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Because, in the very unlikely event that you're the only person on the road who's driving correctly, you might as well just not piss the rest of them off.
And because if you actually are the only person who's driving correctly, then you doing what I suggested will not piss people off, but rather it'll entice them to follow your example.
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They deserve to be pissed off if they're that dumb. Their feelings are not worth making the situation worse.
Snowflakes do not seem very precious to me in the middle of a blizzard. ( ok, technically I don't think the wind had come up enough yet for it to be a blizzard, but close enough)
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Because, in the very unlikely event that you're the only person on the road who's driving correctly, you might as well just not piss the rest of them off.
This is my daily life. Why the fuck should I care about what other people think?
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What I suggested would not make the situation any worse. In fact it would make the situation better.
Pissing everyone off is unlikely to make the situation any better.
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What I suggested would not make the situation any worse. In fact it would make the situation better.
Because a longer traffic jam is better or something?
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Pissing everyone off is unlikely to make the situation any better.
This is the SJW approach to traffic? Feelings trump facts?
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This post is deleted!
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Because a longer traffic jam is better or something?
If he has to suffer, so should everyone else.
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Because a longer traffic jam is better or something?
No. Because other traffic is more likely to follow you and use both lanes if you're not being an asshole about it.
This is the SJW approach to traffic? Feelings trump facts?
In what way does one solitary person zipping up to the very front and cutting into a lane of traffic that's already queued help to make the situation any better?
Better overall, I mean. Not just better for you.
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Because, in the very unlikely event that you're the only person on the road who's driving correctly, you might as well just not piss the rest of them off.
As we've tried to convey, there's nothing preventing those people from using the second lane. So if they're pissed off, it's entirely of their own doing. I have no sympathy.
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What I suggested would not make the situation any worse. In fact it would make the situation better.
You still haven't answered my question.
If you don't merge at the end of the lane, where are you supposed to merge? And how is that information conveyed to drivers?
ANSWER THE QUESTION.
Because what you're saying is the "correct' behavior not only goes against the actual rules of the road as put down by the DMV, but seems to go against the very capabilityof drivers being able to follow those (unwritten, and possibly only in your head) rules. Since people aren't telepathic, and your merge point is unlabeled.
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In what way does one solitary person zipping up to the very front and cutting into a lane of traffic that's already queued help to make the situation any better?
Pop quiz:
If there's two open registers at the supermarket, and one has a line of 20 people, and another has a line of zero people, am I an asshole by "zipping up" to the register with no line? Yes/no. Show your work.
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@anotherusername said:
In what way does one solitary person zipping up to the very front and cutting into a lane of traffic that's already queued help to make the situation any better?
Pop quiz:
If there's two open registers at the supermarket, and one has a line of 20 people, and another has a line of zero people and actually it's not open I lied before, am I an asshole by "zipping up" to the register with no line? Yes/no. Show your work.
FTFY
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What exactly is the second open register in your metaphor about traffic merging into one lane supposed to represent? Is the bottleneck at the supermarkets you go to the sliding doors at the exit?
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Is the bottleneck at the supermarkets you go to the sliding doors at the exit?
As a matter of fact, if you go to Costco or Sam's Club, that's where a bottleneck is. But that's not relevant. Blakey's analogy holds as given.
