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Merging Zipper

One thing that typically irks people is a crazy traffic jam caused because people don’t know how to merge (or, actually, they choose not to merge properly). Whatever happened to the good old “zipper” tactic when merging lanes? Remember, the one car, per car merging zipper that you should have been taught in driver education?
Traffic jams on highways are often triggered where two lanes must merge into one. Lanes of cars cannot merge if there are no large gaps between cars. Therefore, drivers who create large gaps between cars will ease this type of traffic jam. This should be simple, but typical drivers pack themselves tightly together whenever the traffic comes to a stop, so nobody can merge, except at the end of the jam. This creates a low speed (or what some of us call the daily “grind.”) If drivers would just back off and allow others to merge ahead of them, and they left large spaces ahead of them to do so, even if traffic slows to a crawl, merging is easier and traffic tends to move faster.
So here, what we end up with is people not only merging before the lane ends, but also attempting to merge where it ends. So, while doing both causes a jam, simply merging by allowing one car, per car before the lane ends just makes sense. If everyone followed this rule, we’d all get where we’re going on time. And we’d be just one big happy merging bunch of Americans.
Until next week…
Daun Thompson
Writer / Comedienne / Artist
Merging Zipper – Comedy Defensive Driving

Daun Thompson: Daun Thompson has spent years acting in both film and theatre which has been paramount in launching her onto the comedy stage (incidentally, without a helmet, resulting in a nasty concussion). Being a funny girl is a full time job. A job that she hopes that one day will come with dental benefits and a 401K. Unlike her work, she is biodegradable, yet flame retardant. And gentle to the touch. Her goal in life??? For strangers to approach her and ask "Didn't you used to be somebody?" In the late 1980's she cut her teeth at the Velveeta Room on 6th Street in Austin, Texas ... the original room with the stripper pole. From there, she moved to northern California and worked with many comedy icons, like Mitch Hedberg, Marc Maron, Colin Quinn, Vic Dunlop, Huck Flyn, Michael Mancini, Doug Ferrari, Shang and Brian Posehn. Daun has been a licensed driver safety instructor and trainer with Comedy Defensive Driving for over 9 years. Her knowledge of driving safety laws keeps her readers informed and engaged with her blog adventures. She still continues to do stand-up comedy, sometimes in a reclining position...just to be different.