Poor Driving: Merging Edition

(Warning: this post is going to have a lot of profanity in it. I know I don't swear much, especially on this blog, but I think if there's one thing we can all agree deserves some swears, it's a bunch of dumbass motherfuckers who can't drive their cars, amirite?)


Seattle drivers, you suck at driving. Of course, youdon't think you suck at driving. You're a good driver. Of course you are. It's all the other nincompoops on the road that are the problem, not you.

Sure.

Based on all of the stupid, oblivious or just plain obnoxious shit I see every day on my commute, though, you're the problem too. But your sins are legion; I simply can't fit them all into one blog post. So today we're going to focus on one of the biggest problems of them all:

Merging.

Way too many of you need to learn how to fucking merge. At least half the drivers I see on the road in merging situations are doing it wrong. And it's fucking up the commute for the rest of us. Today was even worse; apparently it was "International Idiotic Merger Day" or some shit like that.

So let's break it down into nice, easy-to-follow steps from all three sides of the merge. (Yes, there are three.)

Mergers from an on-ramp

1) Get the fuck up to freeway speed. Seriously, it's not that hard. You know that pedal on the right-hand side of your footwell? Pressing harder on that makes you go faster. It's a technological marvel. Try it sometime. Like when you're headed down an on-ramp towards the freeway. You can't merge properly if you're not going fast enough.

And even over here in Seattle, the vast majority of on-ramps are plenty long enough to get up to speed. (Eastern Washington, with its vast expanses of open land, can afford to give you half a mile of on-ramp to get up to speed. We don't have room over here for that shit, but what you do get is damn well enough.)

I know from personal experience, for example, that every single on-ramp from Lynnwood to downtown on southbound I-5, with the exception of the Yale on-ramp, is long enough to get up to 60 mph. Really, I promise. (You can probably even make Yale if you try hard enough, but I can't in good conscience levy that as a reasonable expectation. It's a really short ramp.) Most of them are even long enough to do it from the meter. If I can do it in a shitty-ass Dodge minivan hauling several other people for my vanpool, your Prius or Outback can manage it too.

Yes, you might have to gun the engine to more than 2000 rpm. It will survive.

2) Find a fucking gap in the traffic. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen some dipshit cruise obliviously down the on-ramp, exactly paralleling a car on the freeway, only to have to slam on his brakes when the merging lane ends because he wasn't paying attention to the traffic he was merging with.

Do not fucking do that shit. As you're coming down the ramp, line yourself up with a break in between cars, not right next to one. The cars on the freeway may not leave much of a gap. That's not your fault; that's on them for either being oblivious dipshits or assholes. Just do your best, and generally everything will work out.

Oh, and one car to a gap, please. If you try to cram in to a gap as a second car, you're a jerk and I hate you.

3) Have some motherfucking confidence. Many of the poor merges I see are caused by people just being too damn timid. If you've found yourself a gap, then get the fuck over into the lane! Don't cruise next to the gap; don't hover partway over like an indecisive asswipe shit-for-brains. Just go! If you're scared because you don't know if you'll fit because you don't know how big your car is, you'd damn well better have gotten that car within the last week. Otherwise, there's no excuse for not having a sense for whether or not you'll fit into a particular gap.

You can adjust spacing with the car in front once you're in the lane. Just get over already!

Ta-da! You have successfully merged onto the freeway from an on-ramp without slamming traffic to a standstill. Congratulations.

Mergees in the freeway lane

1. Plan ahead and leave a goddamn gap between you and the car in front of you. If done properly, this will cost you, like, a second of travel time. Here's how this works: (a) see an upcoming on-ramp; (b) slow down just slightly to let the car in front of you pull away enough to open a gap; (c) resume your former speed.

It's really that fucking simple. And if you do this, then you won't have to slam on your brakes later to open that gap for someone who's been forced far below freeway speed by your stupid-ass driving.

2. Pay some fucking attention to the mergers. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen some dipshit cruise obliviously down the freeway, exactly paralleling a car on the on-ramp, only to have to slam on his brakes when the merging lane ends because he wasn't paying attention to the traffic that was merging.

Do not fucking do that shit. As you're driving next to the ramp, line yourself up with a break in between cars, not right next to one. The cars on the on-ramp may not maintain this spacing well. That's not your fault; that's on them for either being oblivious dipshits or assholes. Just do your best, and generally everything will work out.

3. Don't be a dick.. Your time is not so important that you can't afford to let one person merge in front of you, unless someone is actively in labor inside your vehicle. Then you're excused.

People in the lane next to the merging lane.

Here's the third side of the merge I was talking about. It's not just about the mergers and the mergees; the people next to the action can cause problems, too. So here's what to do:

1. Don't fuck this shit up. Ideally, the people in the lane next to you and the people in the on-ramp are engaged in a carefully choreographed dance that will allow them to seamlessly merge with one another like... Well, fill in your own graphically lewd analogy here. Anyways, you have one job here. Stay the fuck out of the way. See that gap in the lane next to you? That's not for you, even if that lane is going faster. That's for someone merging, and if you take it, you've just screwed up all the careful work those people just put in, cockblocker.

If you do this before the on-ramp actually reaches the freeway, you're just a jerk. If you do it while people are actually trying to merge, you are either the most oblivious idiot in the history of the universe, or you are an absolute and complete asshole who is destined for the special hell of which Shepherd Book spoke.

You may have an excuse if the on-ramp is actually a weave lane and you're trying to exit. You will still receive a contemptuous look for not planning ahead better.

One other thing, inspired by the discussions of the zipper merge during the recent Trafficpocalypse. I have no objections to the zipper merge, but those who zip really fast up to the front, and then have to slam on their brakes and force the people in the other lane to do the same to let them in can go rot in hell. It's not going to ruin your whole fucking day if your opportunity to merge smoothly happens a car or three back from the end of the lane. It is going to ruin a lot of other people's days when the backup caused by your selfish assholery ripples back through the lanes.

I'm a nice guy; if I see you actively trying to merge smoothly before the lane ends, I will more than happy to open a spot for you. But if you're stopped at the end of the lane trying to nudge your way in, well then, fuck you, you can just sit there and rot.

TL;DR: Merging is actually easy: pay attention and don't be a dipshit.

What poor driving technique drives you up the wall? Let me know! As you may have guessed from the post title, this will probably be a multi-part series. So let me know what bugs you. Odds are it bugs me too, and I'll swear at it a lot for you in a future blog post.