PolicyGuy

Thursday, October 30, 2003


Minnesota to Advocate "Zipper" to Cut Down on Merge Rage
The Pioneer-Press points out one of the frustrations of highway driving today: "It's maddening when you're sitting in a long line of cars merging to a single lane on the highway and someone zips along in the open lane and cuts in near the front of the line."

The Minnesota Department of Transportation will be advocating a "zipper" technique for dealing with the problem.

Electronic signs will tell motorists when to queue up early, old-style (one lane), and when to occupy two lanes up until the point where the second lane disappears.

A Department of Transportation official says "If traffic is heavy, the system will instruct motorists to use both lanes and take turns once they've reached the defined merge point just before the lane closure."

It's good to see the state trying to address a minor though common problem. Now if state residents would only learn how to yield and merge properly. My driving around the area confirms the news account that "Minnesota drivers are not good at yielding the right of way in general, and the state led the nation in 2001 with 15 percent of its accidents caused by failure to yield."

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"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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