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Comment by curtis | Hacker News Reader

Late merging works fine in Seattle, and in my experience the lane that's closed moves substantially faster than the open lane because Seattle drivers will actually let you merge in. That's not how I recalled it working when I lived in Texas though. In Texas if you got caught in the closed lane you were pretty much stuck there for a while, while the guys in the open lane whizzed by too fast for anybody in the slower (possibly stopped) closed lane to merge safely.

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If the person merging late had to stop, then it means they went too far without getting a space (because they didn't take the chance they were given or no one gave them space). This is the problem with zipper merging: if everyone gets it right it's beautiful but the failure mode is near catastrophic (effectively stopping one lane) and easy to get into. One or two bad actors can ruin it.

...and in my experience the lane that's closed moves substantially faster than the open lane because Seattle drivers will actually let you merge in.

I think that's actually because more people are early-merging than late-merging. So you have more car volume in the open lane than the soon-to-be-closed lane leading up to the merge. Definitely a way better situation everyone early-merging, but sounds like there's still room for improvement: ideally both lanes should move at about the same speed.

Seattle drivers are some of the worst mergers on the planet. You'll see a half-mile-long line of early mergers and then an entire unused lane. Absolutely blows my mind.

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