First, the eggbeaters must have two beaters.  They cannot be the single beater kind.  However, two beater electric hand-mixers are also acceptable.  The zippers won’t fasten your clothes.  They’re what traffic people call zipper merges.

Picture an interstate highway.  One lane is closed ahead, probably for construction.  Sooner or later, all traffic will have to be in the lane that stays open.  The zipper merge proponents say that if drivers merge into that lane before they absolutely have to, the traffic queue in it will grow very long and leave the closing lane practically empty – wasting valuable road space.  They recommend that nobody merge into the through lane until they reach the actual merge point.  That way, they say, all the otherwise wasted space in the lane blocked ahead will be filled with traffic instead of nearly empty.  They contend this would be more efficient.

Would it?  First of all, it’s not true that most drivers merge early, as the zipper merge advocates assert.  Some do.  Some don’t.  There are always plenty of cars idling along in the blocked lane.  Some drivers even leave the through lane because they see so many cars passing them in the blocked lane.  Still others, judging from their behavior, apparently haven’t even noticed the lane closing signs.  All they know is that they are in a traffic jam.

Also, consider the hurt feelings of the drivers who have stuck it out in the slow moving through lane when they finally reach the merge point only to find other drivers trying to butt into line ahead of them.

Here the zipper mergers suggest that,as you bully your way into line, you ignore their obscene gestures, blocking tactics, cussing, and nowadays even possible gun threats!  Just feel good about doing the right thing.

Is it the right thing though?  Well,no matter how traffic lines up approaching the merge point, what happens there is always the same.  After stopping to wait for a space to open up, a car merges into the through lane.  Then the car already in the through lane takes its turn and thereby blocks the next merging car.  Everybody stops again.  A new space forms ahead, and the maneuvers outlined above are repeated by two more cars.  Everybody stops again.  The maneuvers are repeated again, and everybody stops again.  And that is the pattern – as seemingly unalterably decreed.  Stop, merge.  Stop, merge.  Stop….

Remember the eggbeater?  Hand-mixer?  Whatever.  The blades on the two beaters never hesitate or stop.  They just merge.  They flow – smoothly, efficiently.  This eggbeater image for merging traffic was given to me by Denise McCluggage on the phone quite a few years ago.  We both wondered why we were the only drivers trying to apply it at forced merge bottlenecks.

It’s not hard.  You just accept that merges must happen and pay strict attention to traffic.  You don’t rush to fill the space ahead.  You just watch the flow, keep moving, and leave a bit of space for the merging car.  If you are in the merging car, you watch the traffic, keep moving, and use the space provided for your merge.  It’s like the blades of an eggbeater.  They never touch, or speed up, or slow down, or stop to accommodate each other.  They merge!

The answer is not, as the zipper mergers say, to use the available space in the closing lane.  Ultimately that makes no real difference.  The thing to do, as the eggbeater mergers say, is to stop wasting time, brakes,time, gas, TIME, patience, and TIME with all that ludicrous stopping!