Lately, I’ve been staying at 55, trying to drive on the right. It is nearly impossible to do! You have old ladies doing 45, and people who STOP on the merge ramps! It make driving at 55 MORE stressful.
One of my biggest pet peeves are the City drivers who won’t make a left turn on red off of a one-way street onto another one-way street. I can’t even count the times I’ve (politely) tapped the horn, only to have the person ahead of me stare blankly back through the rear-view.
I also hate the slow left-lane drivers, the up-grade truck-passers (the up-grade part isn’t so much of a problem here in IL), and the makeup appliers.
-Cem
The actual bottleneck is 100 feet-about 10 car lengths. But, by merging ealy, (and making sure everyon else does, too), these fucksticks ('tis the Pit, lest we forget) are lengthing the bottleneck to 6000 feet. These two situations are not equivalent. First off, it takes time to build that backup. Secondly, instead of having 100 feet of road at a speed of 10-20 mph, there is 6000 feet. Thirdly, you cannot assume coopertive merging in Michigan. These people would be run off the road in Cali.
IME California drivers cooperate well during merging, for the most part.
When two lanes of traffic approach a single-lane bottleneck, they move at half the speed of one. So, for example, if the bottleneck passes 50 cars/minute, the two lanes will each feed 25/minute into it.
If cars are arriving at a rate greater than the bottleneck can pass them, they will back up no matter how many lanes are in use.
But there’s no magic way to have multiple lanes feeding lots of cars at high speed into a single-lane bottleneck - they’re gonna accumulate into a backup.
Nor in many other places. It will certainly be true that if one lane is feeding the majority of cars into the bottleneck, that will be the one to be in - but this is not desirable.
I see you have never driven in Sacramento… 
That’s where everyone drives tractors, right? 
One thing about merging in SoCal: You need to be a little aggressive. If you are, people think you know what you’re doing and will cooperate. If you look timid, then they’ll eat you alive.
What does being American have to do with any of this? The OP pretty much perfectly describes the vast majority of European drivers I’ve ever encountered as well.
So what’s the point of having more than one lane of travel?
Really? I passing on the wrong side was very uncommon in Japan, and I was under the impression that the same was true in Europe. Don’t most European drivers flash their lights and tell you to move to the slow lane? I prefer that to the American way which is to just use the slow lane themselves to pass you. Also, hazard light usage was ubiquitous in Japan, unlike the US.