More than four out of every five Australian drivers claim to have witnessed other drivers merging poorly – and just over one in every two cops to having problems with merging themselves, according to figures from Insurance Australia Group (IAG).
Little wonder then that a question posed by Queensland’s Department of Transport and Main Roads on its Facebook page resulted in a great deal of confusion.
“The two cars need to merge into one lane. Who goes first?” was the question posted under a diagram of an orange car in front of a blue car in the next lane. The two cars are separated by a dotted white line which ends next to a “form one lane” sign.
One respondent wrote that the blue car should go first as drivers should always give way to the right; another agreed that the blue car should go first “because it’s for overtaking and that yellow one will just slow down blue car and flow of traffic.”A third Facebook user called it “the most confusing rule of all.”
The answer, of course, is that in the scenario depicted, which is zipper merging – when two lanes of traffic combine into one and are not separated by lines – the orange car should go first. Even then, the driver needs to indicate his intentions ahead of time.
As Kevin Button, the representative for the state’s Department of Transport and Main Roads put it in a follow-up comment to his answer to the quandary: “make it Simple and Zipper the traffic.”
Had the image used the same scenario but with the line continuing, the blue vehicle would have had the right of way. This form of merging is used when drivers enter a motorway.
Some of those answering the query got it right, but the 54% of Aussie drivers who admit they have problems merging, and the 83% who say they have experienced other drivers merging poorly are clearly not alone in their confusion or frustration.
