[devin]

I take issue with your theories. The "payoffs" you allude to do not exist. Your "zipper-merge" costs you gas money, and if you took the time to watch the video, you'd realize that you are considered a "cheater". Cheaters feel better about having gotten in front, but what they don't realize is that the "sleeper" is providing a way for cars to merge, thus alleviating the jam in the first place. All you're doing is typical busy-body traffic maneuvers that soothe your rattled frame, but do nothing to actually get you to your final destination any faster. The difference between maintaining adequate distance and doing your patented "zipper-merge" have been proven to shave at the most, a minute and a half off of your commute. Even if you do this five days a week, you're saving roughly 8 minutes. If you think that's worth it, then you should also be aware that the vast majority of accidents occur while changing lanes.

[Dove]

Actually, this study (http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/wz/workshops/accessible/McCoy.htm) lends credence to the claim. Late merges have better throughput than early merges when encouraged by traffic signs and uniformly adopted.

The study does not directly address the effect of "cheating" late merges which can create waves, but did note that traffic signs which strongly encouraged early merging by everyone increased overall transit time through construction. That suggests that the default case is better.

That makes a little sense to me: a single lane can bear less traffic, so extending the amount of distance everyone has to spend in a single lane might result in higher latency overall, if not necessarily lower throughput.