Merge lanes and self righteous drivers

[Kuros]

It's a tricky one... on one hand you've got the people who will decide to join the queue miles back then get annoyed at someone using the merge correctly..
You then have the people that gun it too fast (in my opinion) down the right hand side and then force themselves in (The sort that, given the chance, would happily ram the other person off the road)...

But then you've got the middle lane straddlers, who don't actually help /anyone/ in the situation, causing more traffic (in terms of length, at least) for no legal reason.

 

[adolf hamster]

People used to do this to me all the time on one of the M25/M23 sliproads. I just used to maintain my position, comfortable in the knowledge that they wouldn't keep trying to force me out of the line, because it would mean crashing their expensive BMW into my worthless Skoda. It worked every time without fail.

last it happened to me i was in the BMW and the ******** blocking was in a mondeo

had to floor it to go past the volvo in front, despite having already assesed that trying to do so would be too dangerous, nearly had me going into oncoming traffic.

i'll be honest, i'm not sure what i'd have been able to do in a slower car other than ram mr mondeo off the road and god only knows what the audi 6" off me backside had to do.

 

[Akagi]

In that position, with no other option, I would have held back and tried to merge behind the Mondeo, begrudgingly. Unless the traffic was flowing too fast for this to be an option of course! My scenario was crawling pace traffic.

 

[Dis86]

NZ have giant signs everywhere saying "merge like a zip" at merge in turns which we should have if we don't already.

Which would be freakin perfect. However there's always 1 complete moron who just can't do it.

I remember a junction i used to drive through every day on the way back from work. It was the perfect zipper junction except every night without fail you would get one berk who just wouldn't merge and then snarled the whole thing up just because they wanted to be one car in front.

 

[adolf hamster]

In that position, with no other option, I would have held back and tried to merge behind the Mondeo, begrudgingly. Unless the traffic was flowing too fast for this to be an option of course! My scenario was crawling pace traffic.

sadly the traffic was too fast, and aforementioned audi right behind me. i'd matched speed with the volvo to merge in and would have been fine for room, except for mr mondeo intentionally closing the gap.

 

[Akagi]

muppets... :l

 

[Scythe]

Ok so this was on my route home this evening. On the dual carriageway I usually take there is currently some roadworks which in turn require the road to merge from two lanes to one.

I am then greeted by a nice FedEx lorry driver who decides he is going to straddle both lanes for a good mile prior to the actual merge blocking both the left and right lanes (self righteous so and so) causing a tailback in both lanes.

As far as I am aware the highway code says to use both lanes until the merge point. Why do people go out of their way to enforce their own rules of the road? Why not become a traffic cop instead

Rant over.

Thoughts?

I got some footage with my dashcam below showing this, its only a small snippet but should give an idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxCDRWPBgCw

I drove down there twice this week, yesterday it took 45 mins to get from one roundabout to the Shell roundabout

People who don't merge in turn drive me crazy, but it's been two lorries in two days that I've seen blocking lane two now.

 

[norm]

The only reason I could see why a lorry would straddle the lanes is to maintain their safe following distance without losing position in the queue.

 

[GeForce]

It's one of those pathological situations where one person doing it wrong ruins the whole thing.

 

[theleg]

Can kinda understand a big lorry doing it because if someone does zip in front of him, hes got braking issues...

but no idea if that was the case here.

 

[Flack88]

Can kinda understand a big lorry doing it because if someone does zip in front of him, hes got braking issues...

but no idea if that was the case here.

At 2 > 5mph?

 

[Akagi]

The brakes on modern lorries are insane anyway.

 

[Cookeh]

Merge in turn when used properly (i.e. by people who don't see letting someone in as a reduction in their manhood) increases flow through a bottleneck.

I am well aware of that, my point was more in reference to getting riled up and frustrated at it.

 

[Rroff]

Can kinda understand a big lorry doing it because if someone does zip in front of him, hes got braking issues...

but no idea if that was the case here.

I see two sides to that - can appreciate that even in relatively slow moving traffic people who don't understand what it takes to drive a lorry can cause significant extra hassle (even with the more modern ones - had a ride in one of the new mercs recently that had so much automation compared to the old ones) both in braking and getting going. On the flipside though I don't have a lot of sympathy as a few times recently I've had zero consideration from lorry drivers when unfortunately things through no fault of anyone particularly got a little awkward or very obviously through the actions of someone other than myself but the lorry driver still acted like an idiot towards me.

 

[Orion21]

Looks to me like the traffic is faster on the single lane on the GIF .

That said, the benefit of merging and using 2 lanes would be to prevent congestion somewhere further back and having a knock on effect which slows traffic down elsewhere if everyone was in a single lane queue when 2 lanes can be used.

The solution really would be for everyone to use both lanes and do merging instead of queuing and then getting upset when it takes you a lot longer because of the mergers. Use the road properly and it won't affect anyone much if at all.

However, people that race down an empty lane and expect to merge immediately at the end / push in are idiots. As an example (but it's not on a lane merge situation), I frequently see people on a relatively complicated roundabout take a lane that won't take them where they want to go only to try and change in to the correct lane near the front. I never let these types in. However someone who has gone in the wrong lane and tries to join in the middle / near end of queue because they've seemingly made a mistake I always try and let in. This can apply in situations where you can merge but there is no need to as there is only 3 or 4 cars in the lane that has right of way, trying to jump or push in on those cars in the merge lane is just being selfish in my opinion and won't help traffic control.

 

[JBuk]

Looks to me like the traffic is faster on the single lane on the GIF .

That said, the benefit of merging and using 2 lanes would be to prevent congestion somewhere further back and having a knock on effect which slows traffic down elsewhere if everyone was in a single lane queue when 2 lanes can be used.

The solution really would be for everyone to use both lanes and do merging instead of queuing and then getting upset when it takes you a lot longer because of the mergers. Use the road properly and it won't affect anyone much if at all.

However, people that race down an empty lane and expect to merge immediately at the end / push in are idiots. As an example (but it's not on a lane merge situation), I frequently see people on a relatively complicated roundabout take a lane that won't take them where they want to go only to try and change in to the correct lane near the front. I never let these types in. However someone who has gone in the wrong lane and tries to join in the middle / near end of queue because they've seemingly made a mistake I always try and let in. This can apply in situations where you can merge but there is no need to as there is only 3 or 4 cars in the lane that has right of way, trying to jump or push in on those cars in the merge lane is just being selfish in my opinion and won't help traffic control.

The people who travel down the empty lane and then want to merge are not pushing in, they are doing it correctly, It's the people who have this queue in one lane mentality that are causing the problems

 

[Participant]

in slow moving traffic you wont get far anyway and what difference does being 1 vehicle behind make for the short duration you'll all be moving at the same pace through roadworks make?

Really?

 

[nick.lidgett]

The brakes on modern lorries are insane anyway.

I agree with you, the brakes on the newer tractor units are unbelievably good! The old, battered trailers they tow? no so much, albeit in this particular case the speed was so slow he could have stopped with no brakes on his trailer.

The whole merge in turn concept is lost on a high number of British drivers who seem to think blocking lanes and refusing to let people merge in front of them is some how benefiting themselves or the greater population.

It winds me up no end, the traffic queue is moving so slowly in front of them anyway, increasing the gap and allowing a vehicle to merge in front of them probably adds 2 seconds on to their journey time.

Maybe if councils/ contractor and the highway agency used signage like the picture above it would educate people.

 

[Orionaut]

Looks to me like the traffic is faster on the single lane on the GIF .

The reason why the GIF is misleading is that is depicting two completely different scenarios.

Two lightly loaded lanes can indeed merge freely without either lane having to slow much, if at all.

Two lanes at (or exceeding) maximum capacity will always form long queues when having to merge into a single lane, no matter how cooperative people are.

 

[DXP55]

Years ago going up M6 near M54 the outside lane was closed and we passed all these merge signs so everyone had neatly merged in to two lanes - Then as usual the outside lane monkey came screaming past - Then I noticed a lot of blokes getting out of cars - Got there to find the monkey saw a gap and dived in not realsing the traffic was slowing rather fast - He slammed into car in front which shoved it into a few more and car behind who had left a stopping gap found it wasn't big enough and slammed into monkey.

As I went past he was sitting in his seat with both hands on top of steering wheel banging his head on wheel - His XR2 was two thirds it's original size. Oh how i laughed