With Christmas and the New Year right around the corner, we felt like it was time to go back and revisit our favorite Daily J episodes of 2023. The Daily J will return Tuesday, January 2 with brand new episodes.
(WWJ) – Road construction season is in full swing here in Michigan, which means drivers are faced with an unpleasant task – merging from more lanes to fewer lanes.
Experts say the zipper merge is the most efficient way to do that, but not everyone obliges. On a new Daily J podcast, WWJ’s Zach Clark explores why people are so resistant to the zipper merge.
Michigan State Police First Lt. Mike Shaw says the zipper merge “will get aggressive drivers a little bit angry.”
“What that is, you use all the lanes available to you as you approach that merge point. And once you get to the merge point of that construction zone or whatever’s happening that closed that lane down, what you do is act like a zipper. One lane leaves an open space, lets that person in, they go through, then the next person goes in, all the way through until you enter into that merge point,” Shaw said.
Shaw says “it moves a lot faster instead of everybody just sitting in one lane.”
On paper, that sounds great? So why don’t we all just get along and do it? Well, it’s not necessarily that simple.
While Shaw says driving has become “competitive,” Dr. Gerald chief of psychiatry Sinai Grace Hospital says driving is “much more stressful than we realize.”
“There’s a certain degree of tension. Add to that the pressure that we have to be somewhere and to be there on time makes driving a very competitive experience and we find ourselves unconsciously competing with other vehicles. We try to get out from behind people we think are driving too slow and that pressure in the back of our minds operates sometimes outside of our awareness,” he said.
He says drivers can also see it as a competition to beat the “estimated time of arrival” feature on GPS apps, adding more pressure.
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