Which is all well and good until there are only two lanes in each direction.
IT HAS BEEN DECLARED, DAMNIT. 
Depending on the grade and the load, the 15 seconds to let you pass may mean the difference between the semi doing 50 mph at the top of the hill and doing 5.
The reason semis pass each other so slowly is because once they drop a gear, they may have to chase it all the way to the bottom and basically start over. Slowing you down for a few seconds is a better alternative to spending the rest of the grade in the far right lane struggling up the hill with the hazard lights on.
Never seen such a thing around here, but most of the interstates around here are more than 2 lanes, so they really couldn’t do it (without more trucks anyway)
I’m in the Bay Area CA and trucks are *constantly *in the first, second, third *and *fourth lanes during rush hour traffic. It drives me batty and I can’t figure out why the hell they are being so ridiculous.
Chicago. I see it all the time, but it’s nothing deliberate. One is passing the other, and unlike me, they can’t hit the gas, get up to 80, and zoom by the other truck. It takes time. A long time. Sometimes I swear one is going 60 and the other 61, but I’m the impatient sort.
Which roads? Semis are only allowed in the slow lane and the next lane, and I’ve never seen them further to the left.
What bugs me are the trucks in the second lane, moving even more slowly than traffic, and then pushing over to the right to enter the truck scales on 880. Or those who adhere to the truck speed limit of 55 (good) but do it in a a middle lane (bad) when traffic is moving - which happens once in a while.
I’ve got stuck behind trucks a lot of times, it rarely bothers me.
It does bother me when the truck for 1, or 2, or 4, or 8 miles just can’t pass the other truck at 60 mph. “Give it up, motherfucker!” Then when he does finally pass the other truck, I get by and pull over so all the other cars can pass me, he sits approximately 6 inches off my rear bumper at 85 mph. “Yeah, so you couldn’t pass him at 60. Right.”
One case I remember from 40 years ago or so:
Drunk driver comes up against a wall of semis, and then another comes up behind him, so he has about 50’ of road. Until the 4th comes and blocks the other lane.
Truckers have him completely boxed in and call the cops on their C/B radios.
I make it a point to block merge lanes so we don’t have idiots try to merger into the bumper-to-bumper at the end of the lane - get into the lane while there is still some room betweeen cars.
And people:
When you come up onto a merge lane:
either get out of the merge lane (preferred, as the merging idiots will come up bumper-to-bumper) or drop back and create a space for a merging car.
It prevents that show of cars stopped dead while they once again figure out that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.
This behavior should be punishable by public flogging, followed by 2 bullets in each kneecap. It’s “use both lanes to the merge point” for a reason. Your action increases delays needlessly. You are not helping, you’re hurting. Nobody asked you to do this. It is not your job. You are not some auxiliary highway cop. Behavior like this makes life just a little harder than it already is for all the rest of us. Please stop.
What is funny is to sit around listening to truck drivers talk about the stuff all the good drivers of cars do.
No, what slows everone down are the jack-asses who wait until the last minute to try to merge into a bumper-to-bumper line of cars.
I’ve seen it quite a lot on the stretch of I-35 between Cowtown and Austin. Some parts of this route have been widened to three lanes and trucks are prohibited in the leftmost lane. I hope they start enforcing this rule with Predator drones.
You’re from Pittsburgh. You seem to know how to do a ‘zipper merge’ in Pennsylvania. I’ve seen helpful signs in that state, saying “road closed, zipper merge ahead, use both lanes until merge”.
Sadly, too many places in the country find this approach to be too complex to grasp, and thus 90% of the populace merges left as soon as they see “right lane closed 2 miles” and gets pissed at the other (smart) 10% who don’t because they know a zipper merge is the safest and most efficient, unless they’re taken out of the picture by homocidal idiots.
I probably have seen this once or twice in my life, but such an incident is vanishing rare in my experience.
Trucks, and cars, do pass each other relatively slowly. I blame cruise control. Both vehicles are on cruise control and neither wants to go off. Unless they are both exactly the same, eventually one will have to slowly pass the other. But even that is rare in my experience.
Nope. Using all available lanes to the merge point reduces delays by 15%, and length of backup by 40 to 50%. So say I, but also the Texas Transportation Institute, the Federal Highway Administration, and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, to name a few.
What slows it down is assholes who don’t get this, and refuse to take turns at the merge point.
I see car drivers do this more often than trucks. I travel I95 and I295 in Maine and those roads are two lanes north of Portland to Houlton. I will come upon a truck in the right lane doing around the speed limit and some passenger car in the left lane traveling beside it, doing around the same speed. I switch to the left lane to pass the truck and the car takes many miles and minutes to finally pass the truck and move out of my way. About eight of ten times the car will speed up by 10 mph after passing the truck and will leave me in the dust. I would rather share the road with trucks than cars, but when passing a truck, pass it, dammit. You don’t want to be doing 65-70 next to something that can crush you like a tonic can.
Threads like this make me want to start an Ask me about driving in rural Thailand thread. On two-lane two-way roads here it wasn’t unusual for a (probably meth-crazed) truck driver to drive down the middle of the road, forcing approaching cars off the road. (Driving has gotten better in recent years – due to the War on Drugs?)
Would slowing from, say, 60 mph to 57 mph be such a hardship?
When being passed in Thailand (where passing is often done dangerously) I take my foot off the gas and make it slightly easier (and preparing to brake if sudden danger appears from a side road). I mentioned this to two other Westerners who both thought I was crazy. 
Are you quoting local signage or something? I understand the concept of the zipper and find it logical, but I’ve never ever seen any signs here in this part of New England that tell you to use both lanes until a merge point.
The real problem with losing lanes on the freeways is that people refuse to keep a sensible distance between their vehicles. Either zipper or early merging would work fine if people would stay away from each other, but they seem to get lonely and have to snuggle up on each others’ rear ends.
The Germans know that safe following distances allow everyone to go faster in all traffic situations, and they enforce them.