And people not utilizing both lanes up to that merge point are not driving correctly.
If you're driving in the left lane exiting to Oklahoma City, but intend to go to Wichita Falls you gotta merge right when the safe opportunity presents itself. If you drive up right to the point of that "Y" split and the right lane is filled up with cars, you can only be mad at yourself if the cars force you to the left and onto the wrong on-ramp. A crowded lane filled with moving cars isn't always going to magically open a spot for someone wanting to cut in line at the very last second.
People like that piss me the hell off. You are not a police officer. By the way, I'm not afraid to pass you on the shoulder just because you don't know how to drive between the lines. I've got an SUV with all-terrain tires, so I'll go in the gravel and grass if I need to.
Go back and
re-read what I wrote. I did not say I actually did that shit. I said I
feel like doing that when some jackass ignores the previous openings he had to safely merge and chooses to speed up past everyone in the right lane and then try to cut in line where there is no damned opening. That shit slows down everything to a stop.
You may feel like you can pass someone on the gravel shoulder. But if I'm driving along in the right lane rising up to freeway speed and I'm already pretty close to the rear bumper of the car in front of me you should have zero expectations of me allowing you to cut in front of me at the split point of the road.
If you and sixty other people want to sit in a single file at 0.0005 mph for five minutes with a wide-open lane next to you, that doesn't mean I want to also.
Who said anything about going the speed of smell? Somehow traffic jam etiquette got inserted into this "debate" when the original point was about Interstate lane closures: a situation where vehicles are usually still moving along at 30mph-40mph through the work/construction zone.
If you want to get over early then by all means go ahead and do so. It doesn't bother me to let people in who are LEGALLY using a lane that ends soon. If they signal and slow down, I let them in. It doesn't cost me any time and keeps my blood pressure low.
I'm not talking about merging right or left way the hell back. It's just a simple matter of looking at the situation up ahead. If there are openings up ahead and people immediately in front are driving too slow then yeah I'll pass around and get to that next opening. But it's still an actual opening. I'm not trying to jam my right fender in someone's way when there's no room to do it.