Do you do this simply to annoy me?

I have this driving pet peeve.

OK, well, truth be told, I have a whole matching set of driving/traffic pet peeves, but we’re only talking about one today. And, yes, I am working on my special brand of road rage and angry driving and trying to put the whole Golden Rule thing into practice when I drive.

But sometimes, I just want to yell at people.

Back to the driving pet peeve in question: last-minute mergers. Here’s the deal: every morning I get on the interstate to drive to work. Nearly every morning, I get on the interstate at the same exit. Let’s talk about this entrance ramp. When you turn onto it, it’s two lanes wide and the left lane merges quite quickly with another lane from the south. So the three lanes merge into two and then right before you have to start merging into traffic on the interstate, the entrance ramp narrows to one lane.

It’s not like this is a surprise. A) It’s been this way for years. B) There are huge white arrows in the right lane telling you it’s going to happen. C) Most of us on this entrance ramp at 7:20 a.m. DRIVE IT EVERY DAY!

So every morning, I get in the left most lane in the entrance ramp. As soon as possible, I move over into the lane that’s coming from the south. And then, when it’s possible, I merge on to the interstate. But then there are the other people on the road. The ones who drive it every day but have yet to catch on to the huge white arrows in the right lane—the lane they’re driving in!—telling them to get over, that the lane they are in is ending. Either they haven’t caught on or they think somehow, they can outrun everyone in the left lane and swoop into it right in front of someone at the last second when they run out of lane.

It annoys me because the whole waiting–until-the-last-minute thing is stupid. It can be dangerous. It’s absolutely avoidable. And there’s a part of me who wants to cover the distance between me and the car in front of me and not let those last-minute mergers in.

But that would just make things worse.

So I just get annoyed every morning and roll my eyes.

And promise myself to never be that person who waits until the last minute to merge.

Because I’m so much cooler than that.