What is a Sidezoomer?
When there is a lane closure on a road, there are two categories of drivers: sidezoomers and lineuppers. A sidezoomer attempts get as far ahead as possible before he or she has to merge with slower traffic. A lineupper merges into the open lane as soon as possible and waits. These drivers exhibit several types of behavior relative to the point where the traffic is required to merge, which is also called the bottleneck. Cynthia Gorney coined the terms sidezoomer and lineupper in a New York Times article titled The Urge To Merge. Many other terms exist for either driver; depending on the situation, some can be quite derogatory. In heavy traffic, that usually is a result of construction, one lane will end and drivers in that lane will be forced to merge with the traffic in the remaining lanes. The sidezoomer takes advantage of the fact that there is no car in that lane. There are three basic types action a sidezoomer can take: • The sidezoomer drives up the free lane and merges as soon as
