It’s happened to all of us.  You are in the middle lane and want to merge into the left lane.  The car next to you is trailing slightly behind you.  You put your left blinker on and suddenly the driver in the left lane speeds up to close the gap between them and the car in front of them so that you do not have room to merge.  Why did they do this?  Perhaps they suddenly got a jolt of energy?  Remembered they were late to where they were going?  Had to pee?  The answer, in almost every case, is that they don’t want to give something up.  Humans have a natural tendency to want to own things.  Once we have those things, we need to keep them.  That 20 feet of road in front of your fellow motorist is his.  He worked hard for it, and he isn’t going to let you come in and take it without a fight.

Its very, very rare to see a situation where someone will put a turn signal on followed by a car slowing down to make more room.  So what do you do?  I’ll tell you what I do – I take it.   Very seldom are things handed to you in life.  You have to work for them.  You have to earn them or take them.  Imagine if your competitor was that car to the left of you and the road was market share.  You put your blinker on saying, hey, I’de like a piece of the pie.  Of course the natural reaction is going to be for them to protect what is currently theirs.

So, what do I do?  I want to merge – I know there is plenty of room to make a safe lane change – so I take it.  Acceleration followed by a swift jerk of the wheel and voila, I earned my spot on the road. I didn’t ask permission, and frankly if you can’t see a 3,500 lb object moving towards you, you may want to rethink whether you should be driving at all.

-Mike