The Merge or Why Can't Commuters Count to 2

Well, its the short commute for me today. Sit up, stretch, scratch Pepper, waddle into some clothes and down the stairs around the corner into my office chair and stuff my feet into my fuzzy slippers (thanks Emma!). Negotiating the stairs is particularly tricky.

To merge or not to merge - that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler to count to 2 or pursue naught but the loneliest number.

People just can't seem to manage this most basic of tasks. Its as simple as counting to 2, not repeating it, but each driver only needs to count to 2 at each merge. Allow me to illustrate,

Merger (at the start of the merge):
1 - Look for opening between cars.
2 - Drive car into opening.

Mergee:
1 - Allow space for merger between you and the car in front of you.
2 - Watch merger perform said merge and follow behind them.

Say it with me, "And-a-one-and-a-two".

Instead, what we have is:
1 - A group of people who either think the merge begins when there's no more room for them to drive in that little lane that just keeps getting smaller -or- a group of people who believe that if they can just get ahead of those 3 cars next to them it proves their personally superiority over "those people". Hey, its their world, we just want to suck a little air in it.

(who then become)

2 - A group of budding rageaholics bent on getting "theirs" and determined to put a stop to this whole merging nonsense. "Yer not getting in front of me buddy! Nuh uh!"

All this silliness turns every major on ramp and any location where a lane ends into a wild blending of hundreds of thousands of drivers flipping from one side to the other on the "self importance" coin. All the while anyone willing to play nice simply tallies up the extra hours of their life each year spent rubbing their foreheads and hopping from the latest fad in stress reduction to the next.

Here's our favorite merges.

Eastbound SR16 merging to I-5. Yes, big construction here and for goodness sake we need to watch out for these workers. All the same, we spend an extra 5 minutes here every day because of the lack of merge skills. 5 minutes, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, dividing by 60 = a little over 20 hours a year spent merging here.

Northbound I-5 to Madison. This is a drain spout of cars getting on and off the freeway. Another 10 minutes here until we rubbed the sleep out of our eyes and starting taking the Seneca exit instead of working our way across traffic to exit at Madison on the right.

Southbound i-5 in Fife. Crap-o-la! This daily mess is the Rocket Scientists College Final of sanity tests. You've got one lane ending on the right out of Federal Way compounded by a large sweeping corner in Fife. 10-30 minutes spent here daily watching life ebb away.

Northbound I-5 to Westbound SR16. "Thump, thump, thump". That my friends is the sound of me beating my head on my desk at the thought of this merge. What can I say, 2 lanes from the surface streets joining into I-5 and turning into exit lanes for SR16. Shoot me, shoot me now.

Whew, OK. So, moral to the story for us: Around 145 hours yearly spent in delays caused by people who can't count to 2.

Don't drive angry! Drive weird!