come together as one

I have issues with roads, lines, merging, and the overall ideals of the roadway. Today I’m feeling a little…irritated. I honestly believe that merging from a ramp or entrance lane should be the easiest thing in the World. Maybe it’s my race driving training (Brands Hatch, 2002), my vast experience (driving since February 1981), or my lack of impression with my road mates (always). The Eleven has covered this on numerous occasions, we aren’t generally yell drivers, and it always raises its ugly head when people either coming from or going onto a ramp don’t declare and maintain: declare and maintain. We aren't talking about the “construction ahead, left lane ending, merge right” high school debate; that’s a different issue for a different time. This is simply your everyday, driving to work, and merging often scenario. The example used today envelops a two-lane main road – very busy – that receives two merging veins (arteries? I guess it depends if you’re coming to or going from the heart) entering from the right in a short-ish distance. What you have to make yourself aware of, and you should be getting some aware in your diet if you’re driving, is that the first merge from my right actually becomes a third lane. (See the google map below…zoom in, zoom out, enjoy. I’m driving from SE to NW on the blue line. The big road we’re crossing is the Beltway.) The first merging jokesters are entering from the Beltway (and probably not getting back on the Beltway) but they’ll immediately slow down to a near standstill while the gears work in their little brains. Unfortunately for me, I’m actually trying to slot myself into their lane because I need to be over there in a few blocks. They never declare and maintain – if they’d just keep up the speed and acceleration I’d slide right over. If I know that a missile is moving at x speed then I can adjust. If you stop, start, stop, start, worry, have a sandwich, stop, start, we’ll get nowhere. Once we’re over the Beltway there’s little to concerned anyone's mind aside from the cloverleaf exit back onto the Beltway which is pretty simple and affects no one. But, just after passing under the small road you get another batch of mergers coming in from the (inner) Beltway. Say your damn prayers here. That wee ramp scoots in on my right and adds the fourth lane to the road – people who are going nowhere but straight on: you don’t even have to merge…the lane never ends! Ah, too simple. You see, I now need to get over into that new lane because I’m turning just after the big hotel complex. This second merge is the worst; since no one is actually in dire need of getting over (left) immediately they should be smart enough to just keep pace, the lane never ends: please, let me solve the merge and your issues...move!.

I wondered this morning if there was a standard for merging. I hit the internets and came up with a few nuggets on merging from the DMV.org – here a few of the greatest hits:

Still, the procedure requires extreme awareness because the last thing you want to do is have the driver in the vehicle that you are merging in front of end up in your passenger seat. Nor do you want to go into a panic and wander off from the acceleration pedal and land onto the shoulder. Here are some tips to help you become a major league merger.

Merging is designed to permit vehicles to enter and exit a highway without causing disruption in the flow of traffic. Highways are equipped with on-ramps and off-ramps, which generally connect to acceleration and deceleration lanes.

The idea behind this is when you pull onto the entrance ramp, you slowly begin building velocity. At the point where you can make eye contact with the highway, you need to immediately start assessing the gaps and the speed of existing traffic. From here, you should turn on your signal to reflect your intent to other drivers to merge onto the roadway.

Then use the acceleration lane to match the speed flow, and ease your vehicle into an appropriate gap before the acceleration lane ends. Some highways give you slabs of asphalt that are long enough for a jet to take off; others, especially on the East Coast, are so short you will need to make quick decisions or yield. A successful merge entails you entering the highway almost at or at the speed limit, while causing no disturbance in the speeds of the vehicles behind you.

And in rush hour, just in case you're about to pull out that ticket,

Sometimes [the bottleneck] is simply due to the sheer number of vehicles trying to enter or leave the road on a single stretch of asphalt utilized both as a deceleration and acceleration lane. But, you can also bet there is some improper merging going on, causing the entire system to break down into the proverbial bottleneck.

Maybe I’m not crazy.


View Larger Map