Does An Expert Have The Answer To Congestion Or Is He Dopey
Friday, 11. June 2010
You won’t believe the next piece of advice offered by Peter Rodger, Chief Examiner at the Institute of Advanced Motorists! He is suggesting that we queue jump when there are holdups on motorwaysand multilane carriageways. He suggests that where there is an obstruction, such as an accident or work being carried out that shuts down one or more lanes, that instead of forming an orderly queue, like us Brits always do, in just one lane, that we should adopt the nutty Italian technique of trying to squeeze 3 lanes into one without a care for other motorists causing much honking of horns, scraping of paintwork and slapping of handbags. His reason is that this will reduce queues thus cutting congestion, referring to this technique as ‘zip-merging’. He provides warnings about speed and consideration for other motorists but we all know the best way to cause road rage is to try to slide in front of another driver at the head of a queue after he or she has been sitting in it for the last hour. Now I have to admit that I use this technique already but that’s because I’m a pain in the ass, not because I see this as a way of reducing congestion. If 3 lanes converge into one there is a limit to the number of cars that can move down that single lane, irrespective as to whether there is a single lane in an orderly queue or 3 lanes merging into one so I don’t get his theory. The queue may look shorter but it remains the same. But what do I know? I’d rather people didn’t know about this idea. I remember being on the M25 not so long ago and driving in the outside lane for nearly 3 miles, getting to the head of the queue and taking all of 30 seconds to ‘zip merge’ into the traffic, it was great! Actually I think I might remove this article. By Graham Hill
