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Virtually every traffic scientist agrees Canada is absolutely awful at merging through bottlenecks.

In fact, it’s hard to imagine how we could be worse.

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At the first sign of a lane coming to an end, the Canadian strategy is to immediately cram into single file and abandon the soon-to-run-out lane.

Then, as cars slowly inch ahead through the gap, they zealously defend the sanctity of the line by aggressively blocking the entry of any and all late mergers.

But the late mergers always get through, forcing the queued drivers to watch with mounting frustration as BMW after BMW cuts to the front of the line.

The system is dangerous, anarchic, slow — and in some of the better-driving parts of the world it’s illegal. In Germany or Austria, refusing entry to a late merger can get you a ticket.

The reason is that German-speakers know there is a better way. They naturally gave it a complicated name, reißverschlussverfahren. But in North America, it is known simply as the zipper merge.

The zipper merge works by simply having drivers delay their merge until the lane has come to an end. Then, at the precise point of the bottleneck, drivers from each lane take turns entering the gap, like a zipper.