Be a Selfish Driver
Why merging early when there is a lane closure makes YOU the asshole
I was driving back from Moab last weekend to Boulder. Interstate 70 cuts through Glenwood Canyon in a dramatic series of viaducts, tunnels, and bridges with thousands of feet of rock faces hanging over the highway and the Colorado River below. When I saw traffic slowing down, I thought to myself that there are worse places to be in a traffic jam.
Still, with many hours of driving ahead of me, I proceeded in the right lane as the left lane began to slow down. Soon, I saw a sign indicating that the right lane would be closed in 3 miles.
I chugged along at a modest 40 mph as folks began merging into the left lane. Soon, I was nearly alone in the right lane while the left lane slowed to a crawl. Rounding a bend, a horse trailer being pulled by an F-250 was straddling both lanes. In front of the truck, the right lane was completely empty and the left was at a near-standstill. A fellow right-laner drove slightly onto the shoulder to pass the truck, after which the truck blared its horn and swerved as if to try and cut off the passing car.
Slightly worried, I rolled my window down and hit the truck with a friendly wave as I carefully scooted around the trailer; I was answered with a middle finger and some yells as I rolled past, smiling dumbly and flashing a thumbs up.
About a mile later, another truck, this one hauling some lawn care equipment, was purposefully blocking the right lane! Ahead of the truck was empty road, but the driver, out of pure spite, was not allowing anyone past.
Clearly, these folks had never heard of the zipper merge.
The zipper merge, as illustrated in the above video, is when drivers utilize both lanes to the maximum extent possible; once a driver reaches the lane closure, they merge into the open lane in an alternating fashion mimicking the pattern of a zipper’s teeth.
I wasn’t being an asshole for continuing to drive in the open right lane for the three miles until the road actually became closed; I was actually helping traffic flow! Pure altruism! Also, I happened to get through the traffic jam faster. But I did it for the traffic flow benefits, of course!
Experts in state transportation agencies are big fans of the zipper merge. From the NYT, some of the benefits of this technique:
It reduces differences in speeds between the two lanes, shortens traffic backups by as much as 40 percent, eases congestion at interchanges and creates a sense that lanes are moving more equitably. The Texas Transportation Institute found that a zipper merge strategy delayed the onset of congestion at the merge point by about 14 minutes and cut the maximum line of cars by 1,800 feet.
Some states have even experimented with making the zipper merge into law. When Colorado transportation officials experimented with signage to promote the zipper merge in 2016, they were able to increase the volume of cars passing through work zones by 15% and reduce the length of the line of cars by half.
The theory works in practice, but only when you don’t have people like the truck-driving friends I made on I-70 last week willfully obstructing efficiency. Officials have reported that some drivers obstinately stick to their old habits: they merge early, they stay in the right lane but only go as fast as cars in the left lane, or they refuse to allow zipper mergers into the left lane at the point of closure.
The next time you come across a lane closure, make sure to do your part to educate and illustrate the merits of the zipper merge: stay in the right lane as long as it’s open, and as you zoom past the clogged left lane, roll your window down and yell at the other drivers that they’re being an asshole for not zipper merging.