The type of people who see a "lane ends ahead" and immediately merge, blocking up traffic and wasting a half mile of empty lane. "I'm in my assigned place and I did what I was supposed to!!"
The thing that blocks up traffic at a merge is when people can't get over smoothly.
If everyone gets over at the first opportunity, then things go fine. The empty lane isn't wasted, it absorbs brief bursts in traffic that need more time to get over. But even if it was wasted, that wouldn't be a big deal. A 5-mile long section with fewer lanes and a 5.5-mile long section with fewer lanes will have almost the same throughput.
Everyone staying split across two lanes until the end and aligning themselves to do a clean zipper merge also goes fine.
What makes everything go wrong is when people drive down the nice empty lane that's ending and intend to do a normal merge at the end, but they don't start it early enough. Then everything slows down as they squeeze over.
In my experience what causes the slowdown are the people who merged too early who then resentfully close the gap in front of them when people try to merge later than them, simultaneously increasing the likelihood that they’ll rear end the car in front of them and making it harder for the people trying to merge properly to do so.
Dylan16807|1 year ago
If everyone gets over at the first opportunity, then things go fine. The empty lane isn't wasted, it absorbs brief bursts in traffic that need more time to get over. But even if it was wasted, that wouldn't be a big deal. A 5-mile long section with fewer lanes and a 5.5-mile long section with fewer lanes will have almost the same throughput.
Everyone staying split across two lanes until the end and aligning themselves to do a clean zipper merge also goes fine.
What makes everything go wrong is when people drive down the nice empty lane that's ending and intend to do a normal merge at the end, but they don't start it early enough. Then everything slows down as they squeeze over.
plaidfuji|1 year ago