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10/18/2005: "Zip Merging"

Soundtrack: Dead Kennedies - Plastic Surgery Disasters

I've been taking the van into work this week, and it's reminded me of one of my pet motoring hates - the inability of the British motoring public to cope with the concept of zip merging.

The popular cliche is that the British are a nation which loves queueing, always saying "No, after you...". While this may be the case in normal life (and to be honest I doubt it) it ceases to apply the minute we sit behind the wheel of a car.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, zip merging is a way for traffic in two lanes to merge into one. Vehicles use both lanes up to the point of the lane merge, and then merge in turn into the remaining lane - one from the left, one from the right, and so on. Sounds simple enough doesn't it? It's used all over continental Europe and no doubt elsewhere - so why can't we do it here?

Part of the blame has to fall on the Government for their persistent failure to write it into the Highway Code, so that new drivers are taught that this is the way it works. Motoring groups such as the Institute of Advanced Motorists and others have been campaigning for this for years. There seem to be a few pilot cases about (the A4174 Bristol ring road is one I have noticed) but there is no sign of it becoming universally applied. However even if it is included in the Highway Code, what proportion of drivers actually look at it once they have passed their tests? Not many. It should be included, but it isn't going to change things overnight.

Part of the blame must also be placed on the road designers who lay out our slip roads. On the vast majority of slip roads there is no clearly defined merge point - the lane just gets narrower and narrower until it comes to a point. What use is a lane that is half a car width? Again if we look to the continent, we find that most slip roads run alongside the road as a complete lane for several hundred yards before ending fairly quickly - there is a clearly defined point at which the merge should take place in heavy traffic. With the British style of slip road there will always be people who merge earlier and people who carry on right to the end. Not something which encourages merging in turn.

Please note that I am talking about merging in heavy traffic conditions here, in light traffic merging can and of course should occur wherever along the sliproad enables the vehicle to smoothly join the main road traffic

There are all sorts of other reasons to adopt continental style slip roads, but I'm not going to veer off into those here. The good news is I seem to be noticing more and more of them over here. Even if this became the standard however, there are all sorts of other situations in which lane merging is necessary (roadworks, ends of dual carriageways, etc).

So unfortunately, the main portion of blame has to land fair and square on the head of the driver. Zip merging requires two things - leaving a reasonable gap between your vehicle and the one in front, and being prepared to let someone pull into it. The 'Average British Driver' (TM) seems incapable of either of these.

Presumably the reason is the irrational obsession that we must get to our destination as quickly as possible. Actually no, that's not the irrational part. All of us are in a hurry from time to time. The irrational part is the belief that letting the odd person out in front of you is going to have a huge effect on your journey time, and also that you get wherever you are going quicker if you sit on the bumper of the car in front than if you sit a safe distance behind.

The 'two-second rule' - think about it. It's drummed into us all as a rule of thumb when we are learning to drive. What it means in this context is that tailgating someone instead of following at a safe distance means you get home *two seconds* later! Oh No! And if letting someone out in front of you means traffic flows more smoothly, then you will get home quicker!

Sadly I have no great faith in this happening, but then most of the time I'm not sat in the car, I'm on the bike and filtering past the whole lot of them. Mwahahaha.