Do a search of your own state laws for confirmation. The predominance that I’ve found for the handful I’ve searched and an article in Road and Track discussing merging into traffic confirms it; The vehicles ON the freeway have the right of way and the responsibility for merging is the driver coming up the ramp. The exception is Illinois which shares the responsibility to each driver.
The law is on the side of the highway traveler. That said, don’t be a tool and jam someone up!
You almost always have had well over a mile that the one lane was ending giving you more than enough time to safely merge into the other lane.
It could be called cutting in. It could also be called “being assertive.” It is sometimes necessary, and it does not make the person who does it a bad person.
I would also say the stream of non-yielding other drivers has more than a few selfish and hostile antisocial people, along with the unaware and preoccupied and clueless among them. If they are all tailgating, that’s a bunch of accidents waiting to happen.
We need to cooperate to use the roads safely.
Heh heh. Yeah another story but I like it. Back in 1957 coming out of the fair grounds with a bunch of cars vying for their spot, the school superintendent had his 56 red Olds and tried to cut in on out Fairlane 500. Dad never gave an inch as a long crease was put in the side of the Olds by our heavy front bumper. When we got home I just took some gas and cleaned the red paint off our bumper. I used to see the Olds at school from time to time and he never got it fixed. I dunno, I suppose I might have yielded to him but the guy was kind of a jerk anyway.
@MikeInNH The reason the zipper merge works so well in Indiana is that we don’t have a single interstate or even s four lane highway that doesn’t have some sort of road construction taking place resulting in lane closures. We have to be courteous and make the zipper merge work or none of us would get anywhere, although there isn’t really much of anyplace to go in Indiana anyway.
I disagree. You have to go through Indiana to get to lots of places, like Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, and South Bend with the Stude museum, and Indianapolis are good places to stop.
@bing. I shouldn’t have made that comment about my home state. There is a great auto museum in Auburn, Indiana with Duesenbergs and Cords and other classics. Indiana University has a world renowned music school. Our state parks are wonderful. My son and I have camped in almost all of them. Our camping equipment consisted of a $50 tent from Walmart, a Coleman stove and sleeping bags.
I thought you were trying to be humorous because I have been to Indiana and knew that statement was wrong
@VOLVO_V70. There was a well known radio and television personality from the 1940s through the 1960s from Indiana named Herb Shriner. One of his stories about his home town was that they put in one way streets and people could get out of town and not get back in. I loved his homespun humor.
Herb Shriner really liked Studebakers. Unfortunately, he and his wife were killed back in 1970 when the brakes failed on his Studebaker Avanti and the car crashed into a tree.
@Triedaq I’ve been to Indiana a few times, enjoyed it every time. South Bend, college football Hall of Fame, Indianapolis, Bloomington…it’s a nice state to visit 
While not for everyone but in the Fall the Indiana Covered Bridge driving tour is nice .
@pyrolord314 and @VOLVO_V70. Thank you for the compliments about my state, Indiana. I’ve lived here since our family came here in 1946 when I was five years old. Except for two and a halt years of graduate school in Southern Illinois, I have been a resident of Indiana. I had dreams of going out west or even to Alaska, but I got a job here and liked my job, so I didn’t leave. After 44 years I retired, but both my wife and I became so involved in our community that we don’t want to leave.
For the most part, drivers are pretty courteous in Indiana. We are now following the national trend and have roundabouts. Usually I go around six or seven times while I make up my mind where I want to go. It beats stopping in the middle of the road and holding up traffic while I try to decide my destination. We’re making progress here in Indiana.
I think we were all just having a little fun and not to be taken seriously.
Returning to seriously. A few zipper merges were tried in my area for the purpose of moving more traffic through congested areas. I encountered one intersection 5 days per week on my way home. It entailed a half mile right hand lane expecting sane drivers to merge well before the extra lane ended. Sane drivers are a (literally) endangered species. The congestion reducing lane immediately became the get ahead of everyone else possible lane. The improvement for this fiasco was to extend the extra right lane for about 3 miles. It got the city and suburban traffic to their turn off before reaching the semi rural/rural area.
I saw a real nice merge outside of Baltimore. Both lanes ended and merged into a new lane opened up in the center. That way no one thought they had priority because they were in the open lane and no one was cruising down the lane that was closed and cutting in at the last moment. The zipper worked at the merge point and most people took their turn, worked very well
A crazy thought that seems to be prevalent here in CA. Just let the dude (or dudette) in. It’s a weird thing, you put on your signal and you go into the lane of choice. Now, it’s not a 100%, but it’s about 90%. There are so many people here, they seem to realize that they too will be merging or changing lanes soon enough so they generally extend the courtesy of letting you in/over and you are expected to do the same. Without this rational behavior, the highway would soon be clogged with multiple accidents per mile. I’m not a native so I’m amazed at this behavior but it is by far the prevalent approach. Turn on signal, look, go. Just don’t dawdle. That’s the way it is down here in SoCal. Maybe it’s the salt air, but that doesn’t seem to help in Boston from what I’ve heard.
You just confirmed something I have always thought to be very odd. I moved from Salem, Oregon to San Gabriel, California in January 1974. I’m not sure after all these years of the exact freeway exchange but it could have been I-605 Westbound to I-5 Southbound. I merged normally onto the first Interstate then was faced with a left lane exit across 5 lanes of heavy traffic in about 1/4 mile! What a highway engineering masterpiece! I engaged my left turn signal and was amazed when I was let in one lane at a time easily making the exit! I found it was fairly common behavior for the 3 years I lived there.