Oooo am I going to get a visit from the police?

Yeah they may have thought it out incorrectly and it wouldn’t work any better if people merged at the correct point, but their road planners probably know more about this shizzle than us.

I’m sure they do, after all they are the ones who put in all the lovely cycling ‘facilities’. I admire your optimism.

The same people who designed this junction which is an absolute mess at rush hour as the impatient go down the RH lane and turn left onto the section of lane put in to ease the traffic flow for those coming from the opposite side and turning right. On a ‘good’ night the halfwits can block both carriageways of the A14 which is a triumph of un-civil engineering.

Merge in turn would be ok but for it relying on someone else for personal safety, which is why the queueing happens.

That’s not “two lanes merging” though is it, that’s people being in the wrong lane?

More an example of not relying on highways planners to know their sizzle as the quote says.

Or is it a junction that doesn’t work very well if people use it wrong.

The same sort of incorrect behaviour as everyone being in one lane when there are two available.

I bloody hate it when

glad to be of service neal 🙂 not a term I’m fond of TBH but in this context it’s probably spot on.

I’m sure they do, after all they are the ones who put in all the lovely cycling ‘facilities’. I admire your optimism.

well they haven’t been doing cycle facilities for very long and I have a deep suspicion not very many of them actually ride a bike. Road planning is much more mature profession and presumably all of them drive. While I’ve no doubt there are still some howlers of road design out there your example sounds one of people misusing the road layout, you could accuse the planners of not predicting human nature when it comes to road use (ie doing the most stupid/shitty/selfish thing possible) but unless it still works badly when used as intended I’m not sure you can claim that particular bit of road planning was a dud. The A6 example I mentioned earlier may not be the best bit of design but the carnage seen recently has been people doing stupid stuff and as I said leaving half the road space unused and causing tailback that then block the roundabout behind.

Isn’t modern stuff designed to be more idiot/dickhead proof? less open to wilful misuse

<but yeah I guess I could be being woefully optimistic>

Finding a queue on the left hand side when you’re flying down the right means you haven’t read the road properly

Say for the sake of argument that’s the case. What are you supposed to do about it? What’s the safest, most sensible course of action?

Stick your indicator on, wait till you reach a gap the size of a razor blade and carve in?

Match speed with the slowly moving / static line of cars, blocking off an entire carriageway for a mile?

Proceeding to the merge point like THC tells you to do?

You can use the same situation at some roundabouts here. Queuing traffic half a mile long in the left hand lane waiting to go straight on. Very little in the right hand lane waiting to go right. So drive straight up the empty right hand lane past all the queuing traffic, do a full lap of the roundabout and ‘hey presto’ 5 mins saved from the journey

Damn, thought it was just me who did this. Best place to do it is the A14 approaching the M6/ M1 junction. Saves more than 5 mins.

I’m kinda torn on that, it’s a bit of a git’s trick. I used to do it regularly in my student days trying to get out of Preston, when Blackpool Road was standing traffic for miles. Whether I’d do it now or not I don’t know, probably not. In exceptional circumstances perhaps.

I’m kinda torn on that, it’s a bit of a git’s trick. I used to do it regularly in my student days trying to get out of Preston, when Blackpool Road was standing traffic for miles. Whether I’d do it now or not I don’t know, probably not. In exceptional circumstances perhaps.

It can’t possibly be a git’s trick as it’s perfectly compatible with the highway code! 💡

It’s not incompatible with THC, but I’m pretty sure it’s not advised anywhere..!

Hehehe, this thread is great. Merge in turn means just that, you merge in turn at the point of constriction. They do it on the continent with great etiquette, everyone leaves a gap for the car to merge in to and the traffic merges beautifully and the road flows. Just hapless driving standards in the UK.

Keep doing it wrong though, it gives those of us doing it correctly a time advantage that we enjoy.

And eventually a smack in the gob that you deserve.

This was the q for woman in her late 50’s to park up still 30 odd metres back and run up the road to abuse me. She has camera in car and is reporting me to the law apparently. Hey ho I say and we all continue to sit in traffic, 5 mins later I’ve pulled in somewhere and she has come looking for me. Not finished she screams out of the window further threats of police and illegalitys.

This is the important bit from the OP, not a minor transgression of queue etiquette. The woman was quite clearly causing a public order offence, and anyone that angry shouldn’t be driving.

Actually more to the point, she lost all that time she saved by charging up the outside then barging into the queue driving in accordance with the highway code.

This country and its obsession with queuing!! 😀

If everyone queued behind each other as in the OP it causes absolute chaos further down the road blocking junctions etc. It the merge in turn at the point of constriction is for this very reason. Otherwise you are taking up double the amount of road length.

The main problem is how terrible us brits are at driving in general, I learnt abroad and was shocked when I started driving over here. 90% of the time on roundabouts I end up going first as the person with right of way has to figure out a) whether they have right of way, not difficult but can take up to a minute and b) if it is polite to go yet, another 30 seconds or so. By which time I’m already at destination and have boiled the kettle.

And as for merging if you must queue unnecessarily and don’t want people doing it properly to get in front of you then don’t leave such a big gap in front of you!

^^^^ this, driving standards in the uk on a whole are terrible.

Lane hogging, inappropriate speed, merge in turn, antisocial driving, tailgating.

Hang on LHS – 4 out of 5 of those are bad things. If you’re being consistent it should be :

Lane hogging, inappropriate speed, merge in turnpointless queuing due to an inability to think more than 10 feet ahead of your front wheels , antisocial driving, tailgating.

Compared to what countries are our driving standards awful? IIRC we have some of the safest roads in the world.

This whole sitting in an unnecessarily large queue fuming at people driving how they are supposed to is spectacularly and pathetically British though. 😆

Lane hogging, inappropriate speed, merge in turn, antisocial driving, tailgating.

Lane hogging and tailgating would be less of a problem if people obeyed the speed limits.

Compared to what countries are our driving standards awful? IIRC we have some of the safest roads in the world.

There is a difference between driving standards and safe roads.

Lane hogging and tailgating would be less of a problem if people obeyed the speed limits.

Not true, most lane hogging is caused by people sitting at 60-65mph in the middle lane when the inside lane is completely clear. Tailgating happens at all speeds.

Cougar. Let me put it this way. If there was a branch of physics called ‘queue theory’ it would state the the definition of a queue is a group of people waiting for a constrained resource. The number of accesses you have to that resource defines how many queues you have. If there is only one door, one lane, one till, one runway or whatever then you only have one queue ( for the purposes of defining who takes their turn at getting to that resource.) If there are two lines of traffic, waiting to get into one lane, there is only one queue.

Imagine in your new “queue theory” that two people further back in the queue are arguing about who was first. Thus the cashier is standing idle waiting for them to resolve their dispute.

That is a queue that hasn’t merged in turn. The cinema analogy stands up and you are wrong. MERGE IN TURN

Good call. So if we have lots of speed cameras to stop people speeding we can stop worrying about those, because they’re not dangerous at 70?

Analogy fail – there isn’t a cashier standing idle.

90% of the time on roundabouts I end up going first as the person with right of way has to figure out a) whether they have right of way, not difficult but can take up to a minute and b) if it is polite to go yet, another 30 seconds or so.

Doubly so at mini-roundabouts. The number of people who have no concept of how to deal with them so just think “I’ll let everyone else go first.” Which is admirable, but stupid, because the people who know you’ve got right of way will sit there looking at you rather than (jump the queue and) go first.

Something I read on the Internet a bit back, “arrived at a mini-roundabout 30 minutes ago at the same as three other drivers… we’re still here!”

Analogy fail – there isn’t a cashier standing idle.

That would be the lane they’ve just blocked off, I guess?

Regardless, whilst I’m fond of the occasional analogy, I’m not sure that stretching them to destruction and picking holes in them is particularly constructive. Ultimately, there is no cashier because it’s a bloody road.

If there was a branch of physics called ‘queue theory’

Well many people have spent many years researching this in maths and computer science for the purposes of multi threading and parallelisation of tasks.

If it were a single resource and the time taken to get through the bottleneck was the only constraint then it would be correct to have a single queue (simply due to scheduling overhead), but there are multiple constraints including the length of the queue which we would like to minimise, and so we have multiple queues and ideally a cyclic scheduler.

I.e.

Use both lanes, merge in turn, and stop being bad at driving.

The cinema/cashier comparisons are right. The place you’re trying to get to is the room with the big screen on it, not the cashier. The two cashiers are the two lanes, at some point you merge into one ‘lane’ to file through the theatre doors and find your seat.

So there’s a queue on the left that’s 50 deep and and a cashier with no one to serve on the right. At some point you’ll ‘merge’ with the folks to your left, but why would you get on the queue for the busy cashier if there’s one free already?

Edit: or at the airport, there are two hand luggage scanners leading in to one metal detector. Everyone has to go through the metal detector but you should use both luggage scanners.

Analogy fail – there isn’t a cashier standing idle.

Care to expain?

Two idiots arguing. Till empty.

The issue with the till analogy is that a till transaction takes a long time but going through a single lane doesn’t so it’s not the exactly the same scenario.

The reason merging in turn is faster for everyone isn’t the last minute nature of it but the order. One car from each lane like a zip. The act of moving from two lanes to one is more effiecent when done in this orderly fashion, rather than the chaotic way it happens in most queues, with people braking to get in the queue ASAP and others tailgating to not let them in.

To facililtate this zipper type effiecient merge it’s necessary to a agree the point at which everyone will do it, hence the “in turn” bit as its easily definable rather than some arbiatry point before the constriction (with the added benefit that the queue doesn’t block junctions).

So to pull this back out to the cinema queue; for it to match a traffic queue, everytime 2 people reach the one till they jostle for position, argue who is next while the cashier sits idle waiting for one of them to approach the till. This arguement can happen at any place in the queue, even the back, and since the arguement takes longer than to be served by the cashier the queue is slower overall. Arguing becomes the rate limiting step, not being served. And becuase we are all obsessed with queuing but also stopping others getting infront of us we do this silly charade outside in the rain. What a bunch of tools.

Edit: Bails’ take on the analogy also works.

Edit: Bails’ take on the analogy also works.

Course it does. Cos it’s exactly what I said in the first place. (-:

As a variation on a theme, I used to have to join the M42 eastbound at junction 2 in the morning, invariably, the motorway itself would be at walking speed and you’d have to queue on the slip road to join. Equally invariably, you’d get people who would hop onto the hard shoulder of the slip road to leg it round the two queues of traffic on the slip road waiting to join the motorway. Used to do my nut in, can’t see it as anything but pushing in, gaining themselves maybe ten or twenty seconds at the expense (albeit very slight expense, but that’s not the point!) of everyone else queuing.

I guess that this thread is an easy way to separate those drivers who know the highway code and are confident behind the wheel from those that are not. Judging by the large number of people queuing in the left hand lane in these sort of situations I’d say that the majority on the road could do with some more training and education.

Bring in mandatory retests and driver education every 5-10 years or so I’d say. Focus drivers attention at this stage on the most common problems (tailgating, lane discipline, observation, appropriate speed for conditions, etc).

At the very least, if these drivers were better educated, this would stop them getting their knickers in a twist every time they observe someone else doing something that they themselves should actually have been doing according to the highway code but didn’t because they couldn’t be bothered to make the effort to learn it themselves.

Equally invariably, you’d get people who would hop onto the hard shoulder of the slip road to leg it round the two queues of traffic on the slip road waiting to join the motorway. Used to do my nut in, can’t see it as anything but pushing in, gaining themselves maybe ten or twenty seconds at the expense (albeit very slight expense, but that’s not the point!) of everyone else queuing.

If they’re using the hard shoulder then that’s not really on, but if they can do this without using the hard shoulder then fair enough I’d say.

Some people just can’t merge and try to merge at the earliest point on the sliproad at the slowest speed possible. Generally this results in them and everyone else grinding to a halt, rather than using your brain and using the full length of the sliproad if needbe as intended, matching your speed and position to slot into a gap at the appropriate place with ease.

Don’t see why I or others should be delayed by these numpties who cause un-necessary delays for everyone else. Probably better to get past them quickly on the sliproad rather than sit behind them for miles once on the motorway as they refuse to use their mirrors or budge from the middle lane.

Bit like the que to the bar or the ski-lift. – If theres is an available bit of floor / snow you use it.
Having said that – Its amazing how many people are unwilling to let a car and carvan filter in front of them from the ‘outside lane’.

Lane hogging and tailgating would be less of a problem if people obeyed the speed limits.

Good call. So if we have lots of speed cameras to stop people speeding we can stop worrying about those, because they’re not dangerous at 70?

Nope. IME (and LHS disagrees with me above), what many call lane hogging is in fact people traveling at the speed limit. Likewise, where I see tailgating it tends to be someone up the backside of someone who is driving at the speed limit.

Markie – You know you can still respect the speed limit without sitting in one lane while the 1, 2 or 3 lanes to your left are empty.

Some people just can’t merge and try to merge at the earliest point on the sliproad at the slowest speed possible.

They’re the same ones who get onto a two lane slip road and immediately carve across to the right-hand lane, presumably because they’ll get onto the motorway “quicker.”

what many call lane hogging is in fact people traveling at the speed limit.

What many people call travelling at the speed limit is in fact people thinking they’re travelling at the speed limit or just below.

I see them all the time. They’ll join the motorway, dive straight through the first lane without pause straight into the middle lane, start their little “it’s a limit, not a target” mantra, and do a nice, steady, safe 65mph for the next 100 miles until they’re faced with the trauma of having to exit the motorway, the “landing the helicopter” stage of their journey.

In reality, after you’ve factored in the fact that most speedometers will over-read by 5%-10%, these mouth-breathers’ nice safe “I’m doing almost the limit, what’s the problem” speed will be somewhere in the high 50s / low 60s and they’ve effectively reduced the entire motorway to one lane with a rolling roadblock.

Learn to drive or take public transport. Seriously, if this is you, stop being a smug self-righteous “I’m all right and bollocks to the rest of you” git and book yourself a course.

Yeah, and if the person tailgating is behind somebody travelling at the speed limit, then clearly they are obeying the speed limit.

Some people just can’t merge and try to merge at the earliest point on the sliproad at the slowest speed possible.

I try not to let it bother me, but this gets me every single day on my commute. It not only holds up all the other people trying to merge behind them, but also slows the motorway traffic to a crawl and someone slows to let them in. I’d say this one thing alone accounts for about 90% of the slow moving traffic on my commute.

As soon as the line stops being a solid white line, they’re sat there almost stationary with their indicator on, with 200m of empty slip road ahead of them 🙁

I guess that this thread is an easy way to separate those drivers who know the highway code and are confident behind the wheel from those that are not. Judging by the large number of people queuing in the left hand lane in these sort of situations I’d say that the majority on the road could do with some more training and education.

Bring in mandatory retests and driver education every 5-10 years or so I’d say. Focus drivers attention at this stage on the most common problems (tailgating, lane discipline, observation, appropriate speed for conditions, etc).

At the very least, if these drivers were better educated, this would stop them getting their knickers in a twist every time they observe someone else doing something that they themselves should actually have been doing according to the highway code but didn’t because they couldn’t be bothered to make the effort to learn it themselves.

+1 Nicely put.