Last night's on-air debate over the better way to merge was a landslide in favor of what traffic experts call the zipper merge. Yet how many times do we see a lane ending with many warning signs and then there's a battle to not let the "jerk" in who rode out the lane right up until the cones began?

The zipper merge is used in many other states and traffic experts say it reduces backups by 40 percent, proving to be safer and more efficient than getting over early as soon as the 'lane ends' signs pop up. It may be counter intuitive, but those who study this stuff say that utilizing all lanes as long as possible then having signage telling drivers the point at which to merge by using a 'zipper' effect (left car, right car, left car, right car) really is the better option.

Below is the video I spoke of on-air from Minnesota's DOT that shows the effectiveness of the zipper merge.

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