Drivers who don’t know how to ‘zipper merge’ are creating freeway chokepoints

Ask anyone who didn’t grow up in Washington about drivers in this state and you will hear an all-too-familiar theme.

“People here don’t know how to merge.”

Why is it that no one seems to understand how to merge properly?

Nothing seems to bring out the worst in Washington drivers more so than watching someone else speed by in an open lane that everyone knows is about to end.

Too bad that driver cruising through the open lane is doing it right. No one has any reason to veer into the lane to block that person or refuse to let the driver in when the lane ends.

That’s why the lane is there. It is designed to let as many cars move forward until the merge and then, the expectation is, everyone alternates. It’s called the zipper merge, and that’s how it’s supposed to work.

“The quickest way to do that is to have an equal amount of cars in each lane and then as they get down to the end go back and forth,” driving instructor J.C. Fawcett of Defensive Driving School in Bellevue says.

“The trouble is so many people want to get in there early and then they feel that the people that are zipping up in front of them are so disrespectful and cutting the line,” he said.

Those drivers are not cutting the line. They are merging the way merging was intended.

For freeway on-ramp merging, drivers should get up to speed, use all of the available space and slide in. Drivers are not supposed to veer across the double line early or stop at the end.

Drivers on the freeway should make room where they can and not speed up in an attempt to make sure the merging driver ends up behind them.

“Why do people feel like they have an ownership of a certain portion of concrete if another vehicle goes up there,” Facwett asked. “Why not let them in?”

The reason might be that the Washington Department of Licensing doesn’t teach or test new drivers about merging in the real world. The entire section on merging in the driver’s manual is about a half-page with three bullet points. It makes no mention of using the zipper merge or using all the available space in a lane.

There is also no requirement on the driver’s test to show that you can properly merge.

“At one of two (DOL testing) sites, we have routes that do have a freeway merge,” said David Bennett at the Department of Licensing.

The state will not require a merge test because it wants the driver’s test to be the same in Omak as it is in Seattle.

Additionally, there are only three questions about merging on the written test.

Drivers don’t own the space in front or behind them. Drivers are not cutting in line when they use an open lane to speed by you.