thank you. the math agrees, too. zipper merges are the way to go!

Depends. If there’s lots of traffic, yes. If it’s sparse enough that you can merge without slowing people down too much, just do it early.

I would agree with this if literally anyone else knew how to zipper merge

At a respectable speed though, merge lane is not a passing lane. My rule is whatever speed can be maintained stay with the car speed in the lane to be merged into, jamming the front punishes everyone cueing properly.

Gave a ride to someone who for one hour kept bitching about drivers who use zipper merge properly. didn't want to tell him he was wrong.

he was so convinced and fuel by hatred of better drivers.

Zooming to the front to try to merge at the last minute and creating a choke point that stops traffic for half a mile is NOT the correct way to do a zipper merge...

Yes before the lane is closed. They are not doing that.

Nothing about the zipper merge says, "last minute". It is wholly and entirely about matching speeds and making room.

Guess what dictates the speed of the lane that gets to travel forward? The amount of traffic that gets to travel... in that reduced number of lanes.

The people racing to the end of the closing lane are doing nothing but increasing traffic density, which directly hurts the effort of zipper merging. If it's going from two lanes to one, the density MUST halve somewhere if traffic is full. That's never going to happen at full speed if there are assholes wedging in at the last second and pushing traffic density past what people comfortably go full speed at.

Hint: it is not bumper to bumper on the highway.

Again: Merging at the last second does nothing but push traffic density up. Often past comfortable densities, which will slow traffic. It's the exact same reason rolling stops happen even without traffic accidents or lane closures in dense traffic.