Maybe where you’re from. In my country its required by law that you yield to people who are merging when their lane ends. If you hit them it will 100% be your fault as far as the police (and judge if it gets that far) is concerned.
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Well, that’s much more terrifying, although I have heard that in the southern US having a machete in your car isn’t quite as weird as it seems to us northerners.
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Ehh, I see that going both ways, they know they need to merge, you know that they need to merge. If the drivers both act like mature adults, there is no issue in alternating one at a time.
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If the idea of allowing a fellow motorist into “your” lane is so infuriating as it causes you to destroy your own property in the process of protecting your imaginary spot, then maybe you should just take the bus.
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I drive 70 miles round trip to work everyday. This is all highway averaging 65/70 the entire way. Every single day is like NASCAR on crack. I literally every single day see people drive like lunatics. I’m 48 and usually just put the cruise on turn on a podcast and chill. The things I see grownups doing in traffic would send chills down your spine.
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I figured they engaged in fender to fender combat because their colors were close, so it’d be the same color paint scraped on the other car.
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I’ll definitely give another driver static if they bypass a hundred cars in a disappearing lane or a closing lane for construction, but never to the point that there’s rubbing. There’s only losers in that scenario.
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I’m there, but I use the magic of reverse commute.
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They show a reckless lack of gunplay. I expected more of Texans.
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I think that was a machete, not a stick
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Never mess with red cars.
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I… don’t think that that’s a thing.
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Nope. There’s no “both sides” here. This isn’t a case of “they simply had no choice!”
The STI driver may have been a jerk for not letting the other car change lanes but they were under no legal or moral obligation to do so. The HHR driver could have just as easily tried to change lanes behind the STI or, I dunno, given themselves more time to safely exit. But instead they decided “fuck it, time to swing at this car and person with a fucking machete”.
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Chevy HHR is a huge red flag.
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Sure, sure. Both cars are almost entirely empty space… well, except for all those fields of force.
By the time the video starts, we’re way far into the encounter. Well past the point of rational decisions on the part of either party. I think we all know this. This is not our first day commenting on incomplete or one-sided representations of stupid human behavior.
That said, I’m commenting on what I can see. The HHR can wait a second and get behind the WRX but chooses to escalate instead. There’s like 50 yards behind the WRX. Likely this is because sane people saw these two going at it and tried to GTF away from it. It seems like there’s a lane closure or accident on the left that folks are trying to get away from. It doesn’t look like a standard zipper-merge area. This is further reinforced by the standard lane markings, rather than a solid line or tightly-dashed line.
It looks like there’s already been contact between the two cars before the guy gets out. I can’t see any damage on the WRX but it looks like the HHR makes contact as it dive-bombs into the lane.
Here’s the thing though: If you’re in a lane, you’re under no obligation to make space or relinquish your position to accommodate another driver. It is incumbent upon the merging party to safely execute the lane change. This means using a signal, waiting for space, moving intentionally and safely into the new lane. We as a culture have created these unwritten rules about zipper merges and how awesome life would be if everyone would just give you space to put your car. And in a lot of cases that’s fine and works well, but we all have to be aware that it is not a given. The non-merging driver does not owe the merging driver a space in front of them.
So, and this is total conjecture here, but I’m guessing that the HHR driver tried to jam himself into a space that the WRX did not relinquish for him, got mad, escalated, and the WRX driver held his space. By the time we join the action this has happened several times. Rather than acquiesce and drop in behind, the HHR gets angrier and angrier, and the WRX will not yield.
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So zippering, which basically will never work in the real world unless AI is involved. Because if it did people would start merging in when they see the sign that says the left lane ends in two miles. Nope didn’t see that, or the one at one mile, or the one at 1500 feet. Gonna commit to someone letting me squeeze in at the last minute. The concept of zippering would allow two lanes to merge into one with minimal speed loss assuming volume was reasonable. Instead the non-ending lane turns into stop and go because you have to let the person who can’t read in at the end of their lane.
It’s not my job to hold someone’s hand through traffic…they are adults they should be able to figure it out. I can’t make the exit cause I chose to not be in the backed up exit lane, yeah I’m not being a dick and cutting my way in, I’ll take the next exit.
Actually zipper merging works best and is most efficient when the merging driver waits as long as possible before merging, and is ideal when all the subsequent drivers use that same area. Merging too early leaves lane capacity unused for no reason.
Zipper merging works quite well in the real world when traffic is slow and relatively bumper-to-bumper. It’s easy to make space and see where the merge point is, and most people see and instinctively follow a pattern. Even in DC where there are so many drivers from so many parts of the world using the roads at once, zipper merging works well and is very viable here.
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This happened in the US. So yeah. We’re talking about the US. In the US the law is that the merging driver does NOT have the right of way. The person already in the lane does.
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