Stumbled on a tip about merging onto highways from a radio show

This guy on the morning show said to match the speed of the traffic in the right lane before you even hit the merge point, not just accelerate after you're on the ramp. Has anyone else tried timing it like that and noticed a difference in how smoothly you get in?

3 comments

3 Comments

mark_price15d agoMost Upvoted

Honestly, yeah that's the whole trick. People just floor it when they're already on the ramp and then wonder why they're stuck. You gotta be doing 65 before you even see the merge point, not after. Ngl, it makes the whole thing way less stressful.

brian3284d ago

Consider the angle of ramp length and design, which nobody ever mentions. Some ramps are brutally short, like they just give you a hundred feet to get from 35 to 65. The engineers who designed those probably never had to actually drive on them during rush hour. It's not always about driver skill, sometimes it's about the road itself forcing you into a bad situation. I've seen merges where you have to basically floor it the second you leave the surface street because the ramp is basically a curve into a wall of traffic. The real fix would be longer merge lanes and better sight lines, but that costs money so we just keep blaming drivers for a system that sets them up to fail.

the_nathan15d ago

Pulled onto a ramp once with my buddy driving and he literally stopped at the end, like full stop, waiting for a gap. I was in the passenger seat just gripping the door handle (you know, praying). Somehow we merged without dying but I still think about that moment when I'm about to fall asleep. Your method is the only sane way to do it. Getting up to speed before you even see the merge point makes it feel like you're just joining a flow instead of forcing your way in. It's like the difference between sliding into a conversation versus yelling from across the room.