It’s taught, but the concept is counter-intuitive, goes against American etiquette for queuing, and puts all of the risk for getting stuck on the driver doing the correct thing (going all the way down to the merge).
The queue is not the lane closing. The queue is the through-traffic. The people racing to the front of an already full queue ARE NOT ZIPPER MERGING. They’re cutting in line.
The point of a zipper merge is to do it cleanly without affecting others’ speeds as much as possible. Flying to the front of a line is not matching speed, and it’s not merging cleanly.
Then it’s not properly taught. You’re still queuing, and if everyone is taught how to do it correctly and is executing it correctly, it works well and everybody gets their turn. Hell, you don’t even need everybody to do it correctly, just most people.
If people don’t fully understand the concept enough to recognize that they are still in line and get their turn, then they were not taught the concept correctly or are not smart enough to be driving a vehicle.
It’s taught, but the concept is counter-intuitive, goes against American etiquette for queuing, and puts all of the risk for getting stuck on the driver doing the correct thing (going all the way down to the merge).
The queue is not the lane closing. The queue is the through-traffic. The people racing to the front of an already full queue ARE NOT ZIPPER MERGING. They’re cutting in line.
The point of a zipper merge is to do it cleanly without affecting others’ speeds as much as possible. Flying to the front of a line is not matching speed, and it’s not merging cleanly.
Then it’s not properly taught. You’re still queuing, and if everyone is taught how to do it correctly and is executing it correctly, it works well and everybody gets their turn. Hell, you don’t even need everybody to do it correctly, just most people.
If people don’t fully understand the concept enough to recognize that they are still in line and get their turn, then they were not taught the concept correctly or are not smart enough to be driving a vehicle.