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Here's another perspective - if I'm in the right lane and you're trying to merge, I'm more likely to adjust my speed and let you in if you're making a decent attempt to get up to speed. But if you're going significantly below the speed limit, I'm just going to whiz by you and you're on your own.
Had this happen tonight for seemingly the millionth time. I am 3rd back in a line of cars merging onto the interstate. Right lane traffic is moving along at 60-70 and is fairly sparse. Lead car in the merge is going about 30 mph up the long straight ramp. It has a lot of room but still tries to merge onto the interstate at 45mph. This causes right lane cars to have to dodge the merging cars and/or stomp on their brakes, and all of the cars in the merge line are stuck at trying to merge into traffic with a 15-25mph speed differential. Dangerous situation.
Why don't some people accelerate on the ramp and merge in at through-traffic speed? Why won't they stomp on the gas? Trying to save fuel? Think they are going to hurt their engine? Please help me understand why people do this. I cringe every time I see this because there is a high potential for an accident.
These are also the people that truly cause road rage. But they are the last ones that will ever get busted for road rage, which shows a complete mental lack of addressing the real problem by stupid laws and law enforcement.
Here's another perspective - if I'm in the right lane and you're trying to merge, I'm more likely to adjust my speed and let you in if you're making a decent attempt to get up to speed. But if you're going significantly below the speed limit, I'm just going to whiz by you and you're on your own.
I agree. I will try to move to the center lane if there is room and I can safely do so. Otherwise, if I am in the right lane and traffic is heavy and the merger is s l o w l y moving, I will keep going, because I am afraid that I will be stuck behind a perpetually s l o w freeway driver.
No, you do not have to accelerate or stall with a stick. A stick is perfectly capable of going along rather steady and/or slowly.
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Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady
This. I drove a stick for the first 25 years that I was driving, until I found an automatic that actually shifted when I thought it should. You do not have to accelerate or stall with a stick if you know how to drive one.
In general, yes, you're right, but I've found that the coasters just will not pick up speed to where I am able to keep the car in gear and go slowly, so I end up taking it out of gear and coasting, which frankly, isn't all that safe.
Old beater car that can't accelerate quickly ...... or ........ old beater driver who can't easily and quickly bend her neck to see what's coming, and simultaneously look at the speedometer.
Fast driver can make any beater go fast just like a slow driver can make a Ferrari pathetically slow.
What do you drive, a Citroen 2CV? A '63 Beetle? You've got all the space you reasonably need to get up to speed on that ramp.
An '01 Honda Civic (non VTech). Though the last time I drove through there, it was a '99 Saturn SL2 I had. Neither one will make 70 in that short of a space, even pushing the limits of traction through the curves. It's not really a big deal, however, since it's in the middle of nowhere.
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The "come to a dead stop" issue is something I dealt with when I lived in Pittsburgh. There's even a ramp that REQUIRES you to stop at the bottom -- as in, there's a stop sign at the bottom of the ramp. Stupidest bit of traffic engineering I ever saw. Even so, the "stop on the ramp" phenomenon happened a lot at other ramps even without stop signs, including the ramp I took to get on the expressway to get home from work. I had no issue getting up to speed on that ramp (which you can find here, bottom/eastbound ramp) despite having virtually no merge lane at all, much less one as lengthy as in your link. And it's not like I drove a rocket ship either -- it was a 1996 Chevy Lumina rocking all of 160HP.
If you wait until the straight portion to start accelerating up to speed, then yeah I can see having a problem. But I started building up speed through the curve unless there was a slowpoke car right in front of me. If I got around the corner to find someone at a dead stop at the bottom of the ramp, I blew by them on the right shoulder and merged at highway speed with no problems.
In cities with heavy traffic, it certainly can be necessary to do that, but around here, there simply isn't a need to drive that aggressively. I think that's why a lot of people here have never learned the proper way to merge; in many places, there is no traffic to match your speed with anyway.
You can't help getting close to them. They are driving in a dangerous manner, and they are leaving you with only 2 choices, both of which are dangerous. You can either try to get up to proper merging speed and end up in their tail, or you can drive as slowly as them and risk someone on the highway crashing into you when you try to enter it.
OR you can see that the dooooofus is acting like a dunce...and increase your following distance accordingly.
That way you will have some ability to pick your "spot" while merging onto the freeway by speeding up or slowing down.
An '01 Honda Civic (non VTech). Though the last time I drove through there, it was a '99 Saturn SL2 I had. Neither one will make 70 in that short of a space, even pushing the limits of traction through the curves. It's not really a big deal, however, since it's in the middle of nowhere.
It's not completely necessary to get all the way up to 70 as long as you're reasonably close and still trying to stay out of peoples' way when you're merging. That way any traffic behind you has time to safely make any adjustments necessary to clear a gap for you or move to the next lane or whatever. It's when someone is sneaking down the ramp at 40mph and refuses to accelerate until they're actually on the highway (if then) that traffic already on the road has a lot less time to react/adjust and when they're also making life difficult for any other merging cars behind them.
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