So it looks like an inverted Y? I’ve never seen anything like that. One lane ends and one continues. The signs show that very well. Is there a sign showing BOTH lanes merging into one? Sounds like a recipe for massive confusion…
All of the highway merge signs around here indicate which lane ends, like this sign;
I haven’t seen any of these around here;
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When those signs are posted in MD, they are more like the second. They do it to encourage merging rather than cutting off the guy in the right lane.
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Around here, they usually include the verbiage- merge left. The car in the right lane has to merge with through traffic in the left lane. The lines on the road match the signage.
I always use my turn signals… but here in Northern Virginia where I live a lot of drivers seem to deliberately block you from changing a lane if you happen to show a turn signal, so the strategy when using them is “make sure you gonna change your lane faster than another guy would be able to speed up and block you” 
So, in that sign, the kinked solid (right) lane is deemed to be continuous and the dashed line indicates the lane that ends? Seems confusing.
It’s been that way in the D.C. area as long as I can remember, and I started driveing there in 1968. Actually, it’s better than it used to be. When a friend moved to D.C. in the late 1970s from NYC metro, he commented about how few people used their blinkers to change lanes. He said he wasn’t waiting for an invitation to change, but just wanted to inform drivers around him that he was changing lanes. I informed him that many drivers took it as a challenge and would rush ahead to cut him off. He stopped using his blinkers and had much better success changing lanes. Good news! These days I can use my blinker and people will stay where they are and let me change lanes!
I’m farther out to the West, so in my suburbia it used to be nice&quiet when we moved in yearly zeroes.
Taught my elder daughter to drive - it was not yet bad.
Now I have to do the same for my younger one, and I’m a little bit scared by the change in driving habits I observe around.