Merging like a Man into the Holland Tunnel

As we were driving into the Holland Tunnel yesterday, Tom entertained himself by staring in the rearview mirror and cackling out a play by play. There was drama behind us. A gigantic gleaming white pickup truck hugged our back bumper, desperate to not let this little black Honda merge.

Photo credit: DeenaH 

Some background in case you’re unfamiliar: On the Jersey side of the Holland, eight, maybe ten lanes of drivers merge into 2 lanes with a really short runway. To help you picture the scene, most of these drivers are either NJ drivers or NYC drivers and then there’s always that light blue minivan from Pennsylvania or North Carolina or some state where they don’t really know how to drive in traffic.

Photo credit: yelp

In this merge, if everybody “made like a zipper” as Tom likes to say, meaning one car goes from each lane in an orderly fashion, if everyone just played nice like this, the merge would be perfectly lovely. It would be fast and efficient and no one would need to stress out. And a lot of time, this is actually how it works.

The problem is guys like the the driver of the big white truck who punch it out of the toll booth and simply must. must. Not let in little black Hondas. At any cost.

I speculated that the white truck driver’s problem was fear based. It was clear that it was the little Honda’s turn to merge. Maybe white truck guy is unaware of the protocol and believes that only hardcore assholes make it into the tunnel, so you gotta do what you gotta do and drive as aggressively as possible. 

Tom disagreed. He said it was all about winning. He said white truck guy just wanted to show little black Honda guy that he had the biggest dick. And even though white truck guy from Jersey was well aware that if he just chilled out and merged like a normal person he’d be fine and also have much lower blood pressure, he needed to be FIRST.

Little black Honda guy was having none of it. He edged the corner of his car half an inch from our rear bumper and kept on coming on. Big white truck guy backed off. He had been squarely beaten. 

As both Tom and I knew he would be. 

In any battle like this, the one with the scratched up beater car *always* wins. Fancy big white truck guy never had a chance. Maybe men who are so concerned with displaying their manhood should reevaluate their manly car choices.

Big white truck guy wasn’t going to take his defeat gracefully, however. Not him. He illegally switched lanes and roared his engine, blowing past us in a testosterone sweat. He barreled about six feet ahead and then got stopped behind a bus. I wanted to wave as our lane creeped ahead of him but I did not. No reason to poke a bear, especially a stupid one with self-esteem issues.

In this particular case study, I’m going to defer to Tom’s hypothesis. It was all about winning. But further study is needed. Or maybe not.