Learning to Merge

One of my traveling experiences this summer found me on the road to Asheville faced with what I thought was a road protest of some sort by a trucker that was blocking the left lane while going very slowly. Another co-conspirator to his right was aiding and abetting this rolling blockade by doing the same. Regardless of the driver’s motivation, after about 30 minutes of sitting stopped or rolling along at less than five miles per hour, it was a bit aggravating, as I saw on a curve that the truck driver immediately in front of me had more than a mile of empty road in front of his truck.
A driver from behind me pulled into the left emergency lane to move around the truck. The truck driver jerked his rig to the left and ran the SUV into the grass, but the SUV accelerated through the grass and passed the truck, speeding ahead to the open road. A long 30 minutes later, we finally arrived at the place where the road lane was reduced to one lane for construction and the right lane moved into the designated “newly formed lane” on the right emergency lane, meaning that we had been blocked for no good reason at all.
Such an incident reminds me of two things. One is that while signs set up along highways are good warnings of what is up ahead, they also can be inaccurately placed, left behind by accident, or not applicable on holidays and weekends when work is not in progress. That said, I do observe them with diligence and caution. On the other hand, it is important in this day of $4 plus gasoline to understand the waste generated by a simple lack of understanding in how to allow traffic to move forward with the most efficiency.
Tom Vanderbilt discovered when he applied a digital model to traffic dispersion and progress, that the best means of merging when lanes are reduced is to move forward toward the “pinch point” where the two lanes become one and then to merge, by taking a gap and giving a gap. It maximizes the usefulness of the available roadbed and limits the impediment to traffic and allows for a return to normal in the most expeditious fashion when the one lane returns to two. That said, please value the place you share on the road with your fellow drivers, not just in your enthusiasm for controlling the space in front of you, but in regards to the safety of all. Driving in a fashion that is unpredictable or “unethical” in terms of forcing many others into useless delay and waste of fuel and resources is not a positive.
Just as all of us must and should respond to the signs of the times, let us not react in ways that add to the problems rather than help them. For the church to recognize its influence in the world, it should not be a roadblock to progress, but rather an engagement of intentional sharing and influence often brought about while meeting others at the “pinch points” and making sure that those on the road understand where they are headed in the first place.