Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

Re:Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster... by peeters on Thursday July 24, 2014 @05:24PM (#8082309)

No, it's provably optimal in flowing traffic as well. However, the "merge point" is variable depending on traffic speed.

Obviously when you're going 100 km/h, the ideal merge point is significantly farther back than when it's stop and go. Nobody is saying you should wait until you're 20 feet from the barrier and then swerve into the other lane. But it's not like that's unique to this situation.

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Re:Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster... by tedsanders on Thursday July 24, 2014 @10:08PM (#8083468)

Zipper merge is synonymous with late merge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipper_merge

If you move the merge point back, then by definition it becomes an early merge, right? I don't understand your disagreement with what seems like a totally reasonable statement by Justin.

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Re:Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster... by peeters on Friday July 25, 2014 @07:34PM (#8088229)

My point is that what constitutes "late" is a function of the speed of traffic.

If you define "late" as "the latest point at which you can safely merge without causing negative traffic reactions (e.g. by forcing someone to brake)" then zipper/late merging is better than "moving over as soon as you can", even in light traffic.

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Re:Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster... by cdash on Friday July 25, 2014 @02:54AM (#8084042)

In an early merge there is no real merge point, people just merge wherever they can. As traffic backs up further and further people merge earlier and earlier.

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