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Originally Posted by freakystyly
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Good article, thanks for posting. Some highlights:
"The system is dangerous, anarchic, slow — and in some of the better-driving parts of the world it’s illegal. In Germany or Austria, refusing entry to a late merger can get you a ticket."
"The zipper merge works by simply having drivers delay their merge until the lane has come to an end. Then, at the precise point of the bottleneck, drivers from each lane take turns entering the gap, like a zipper.
The most obvious benefit is reduced congestion. Cramming into one lane can double the length of a line of traffic and cause unnecessary road blockages to fan out for kilometres behind the bottleneck.
Second, the zipper merge is fair. The simple mantra of “stay in your own lane until the bottleneck” prevents the stress and anarchy of jockeying for position in a single lane. The aforementioned line-cutting BMW, meanwhile, no longer has a clear path to the front of the line.
And, incredibly, the zipper merge might even be faster. A 2004 study by the Virginia Transportation Research Council found that under ideal conditions, the smooth efficiency of the zipper merge results in a faster movement of traffic through the bottleneck."