Have you seen this sign around town?
If you have a driver’s license, the answer had better be “Yes!” But do you know what it means? Well, do ya, punk?
It means there’s a Zipper Merge coming up – an indication that you should keep driving in your lane until you hit the construction zone, and then confidently take turns when the road narrows.
What it doesn’t mean is that you should all try to squeeze into one lane a mile back and then give the stink-eye to folks that end up alongside you when the orange cones force the lane change.
We know, you’re all extra-polite mid-westerners out there, tooling around town in your sensible not-too-spendy domestic automobiles. And it seems like the nice thing to do is to get over as soon as you can.
But when traffic is heavy, it’s really not. Getting over early just means you’re extending the inevitable back-up another notch or two down the road, pushing congestion into other intersections and blocking traffic that would otherwise be able to self-negotiate its way through the still-available lanes.
Don’t believe us? Check out this video.
So re-frame! Put those neighborly instincts to work and embrace The Zipper Merge! Just ’cause it’s new to you doesn’t make it wrong. Like sushi?