Dude: Do You Even Merge?

Ok. So, it seems like, when the sun comes out and it's a beautiful day, people lose all concept of what lane goes where. Saturday was a clear, dry, beautiful day and so was today when I left work. Both days, people act like they have no idea how to merge - even when plenty of signage is present.

Leaving my one office to head to my neighborhood, you turn out onto southbound-road that's three-lanes wide. About a 3/4 of a mile from where you turn onto it, it splits into two, two-lane roads. The left lane has signage indicating that it's to be used for both left and right traffic-split; the far left lane is left only and the far right lane is right-only. A few hundred feet after that split, the far right lane becomes a single-lane ramp to another two-lane street. The left lane becomes a ramp onto an interstate highway.

All pretty straight forward. All very well marked by signs and lane-markings.

I'm in the middle lane heading to the highway on-ramp (meaning my split goes immediately to the ramp to the highway giving me the through-lane to the highway). The toolbag in the rightmost lane decides "oh, I don't want to go straight through, I want to merge onto the highway ...oops there's someone there, already". Dood slams his brakes to avoid hitting me as he tries to merge onto the highway ramp from the wrong lane.

Dood also gets all road-ragey. I see him flashing his headlights, honking his horn and gesturing as he runs up on my bumper. As we reach the top of the ramp, he decides to "show me" by going through the stripe-painted apron between the ramp's actual marked lane and the highway so he can try to cut me off.

I figure, "whatever, dude: enjoy driving your BMW through the gravel and construction debris (glass, nails, screws, etc.). With luck, you picked something up."

Funny part? For as much of a hurry as he was in to get by me, he runs up on the bumper of cars in the right lane of the interstate ...and just stays there, tailgating the other car. I'm accelerating to highway speed and, as the traffic in the left lane clears, I merge left. Eventually, I catch up to the ragey tailgater and give him the politest "wave" I can manage.

Guys like the one who nearly clipped me today are why I used to be against the idea of ever owning a BMW. Oh well.