> Reminds me of when I moved to Seattle in 1988. The drivers here were > so polite that if there was a road construction sign stating > the road > narrowed to 1 lane two miles ahead, they would all start > lining up in > that lane immediately. Traffic would flow smoothly through the > constriction at reasonable speeds. > > Now that I and a million others have arrived here from other > parts of > the world, it has become a contest to see who can get the furthest > down the road before having to merge, resulting in the traditional > glut of cars trying to occupy the same space, leaving the > locals (and > me, 'cause I'm nice and can see the advantage if it were to work) > strung out in their single lane, unmoving, for a long long time, and > cursing the damn impolite asshole newcomers. >
it's more efficient to use all available lanes until the last possible moment. As long as everybody lets one person go ahead of them at the merge point it keeps the traffic moving and makes best use of available resources. If there is a minority of people who don't know the 'let someone go first' rule it self corrects. It only fails if most people don't know the rule. If everyone merges early they still need to know the rule to avoid huge jams in one or both lanes, but the unused lane is no longer serving traffic, so the total speed of the traffic is much slower. Bob -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
