Merging with traffic on the freeway, it's not hard!

Fellow drivers... It -- is -- not the responsibility of the people traveling at high speed on the freeway to get out of your way when you're joining traffic. It -- is -- your responsibility to match the speed of traffic and merge.

Today a person joining the freeway matched freeway speed and proceeded to try to join the freeway. The problem is, that's where I was driving... exactly where I was driving. The person got visibly upset when I didn't change lanes to make room for them. The thing is, there was room in front of me, and behind me... and lots of it.

Where did this expectation come from? Why did that person expect that I would move out of their way? This is not the first time I've seen this either. I think that its come from people being overly polite... I find myself often making room for traffic joining the freeway, when I can. And because we've been moving out of the way of traffic joining the freeway, it seems to have become an expected behavior. 

Frequently I've witnessed similar bad behavior. For instance, at an intersection I've seen a person that has the right of way come to a stop, wait and waive another driver sitting at a stop sign through, trying to be polite. Or another situation I was part of where a person in oncoming traffic at a green light stopped to wave me through when I was turning left against traffic. No matter how polite, this creates a dangerous situation when it becomes the expectation. If people would just follow the rules of the road we can avoid accidents and reinforce proper and expected driving behavior.

The point I'm trying to make here is that we ALL need to follow the rules of the road for everyone's sake. And remember to always drive defensively!