Usually when entering a crawling congested highway onramp, people think they have 2 options:
1) The early merge (they think they're being courteous and polite)
2) The race to the very end, and merge at the last moment (seen as aggressive or impatient behaviour by other road users)
Either of these options would be fine if everyone did the same thing, but from what I've observed usually ~74% choose the early merge and ~24% will cut in at the end. This makes the early mergers pissed off because they've zipper merged onto the highway early and then have to let another car zipper merge in again at the end of onramp, possibly now sitting behind a car that was originally 10-20 cars behind them in the queue. Not only does this cause frustration between drivers, but it also disrupts the flow of traffic, effectively making the left lane a double merge at every highway onramp. Highways are designed to have fewer entry points than exit points, to keep traffic moving, but due to driver behaviour these entry points are clogging the flow of traffic more than they should.
Some of you will wonder how the missing 2% merge…..that's option 3
3) Don't pass any vehicles already on the highway once the broken white lines start. Maintain the same speed as the car to your right (car in left lane on highway), and then zipper merge onto the highway at the end of the merging lane. (This option really pisses off the drivers that want to race to the end of the merge and cut in at the last minute, as they tailgate you, trying to force you ahead)
How do you usually drive when entering a congested highway?
In my opinion, option 3 is the best option as it forces everyone to merge onto the the highway with a 1:1 ratio, which improves the flow of both the onramp and highway. Depending on the length of the merge lane and driver behaviour, a combination of option 1 & 2 could have a ratio of 2:1 to 4:1 (merging:highway left lane) at the end of the merge - terrible for traffic flow.
I've tried it many times, and even though you might get some pissed off drivers staring at you in your rear vision mirror, the traffic generally flows better overall for everyone.
If the law was changed so that you weren't allowed to pass anyone already on the highway when merging, the traffic might flow a lot better, and less road infrastructure upgrades will be required to tide us over until autonomous cars are common place. When computers start controlling car movements instead of humans, road capacity's will increase greatly.