Hacker News Reader

Interesting observation is that what TFA calls the "cheaters", ie those who drive to the end of their lane before merging at the last minute, may actually be doing the right thing. See Tom Vanderbilt talk about it here http://www.vimeo.com/6779064.

If you're interested in this there's a nice longer interview with Tom at Streetfilms http://www.streetfilms.org/tom-vanderbilt-talks-traffic or an hour long Google talk.

View on HN

He doesn't say why in the short one (I haven't watched the long one). Late mergers are definitely bad in some situations - for example, when they are merging into a slow-moving turnoff lane, blocking a whole lane of ongoing traffic.

He goes into the research a bit more in the Google talk and you see where he pulls the magic "15% improvement" from. Also he has a book (which I haven't read) called Traffic so he might explain it more or cite studies there.

I agree though that it doesn't really work in all situations. Tom uses the example of two lanes merging into one for roadworks. Maybe some situations where it doesn't work are an example of poor road design by traffic engineers?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com