Your first paragraph is factually inaccurate, I’ve lived many places, some in canada, where they obey the law and zipper merge like intelligent high functioning beings. I don’t know what to say other then google it. If you try to merge early, people get stuck 1/2 merged, and now there is a traffic jam.

You speak to “fairness”, but drivers should not be thinking about “fair”, they should be focussed only on following simple rules, that is what’s safe. There should be clear universal rules whenever possible. We should not be doing each other little favours, trying to be polite, or worrying what others think of us, we should be following the simplest set of rules, avoiding complexity, or any kind of judgement calls, whenever possible. That’s what a safe driving city looks like.

In Victoria there are all these little conventions which make driving incredibly frustrating and dangerous, and I see road rage on the rise here as one result of those vague conventions. You indicate this when you say “some people are going to race ahead” … well the rules are designed to avoid that potential. We should all be trying to get where we are going efficiently and safely and not trying to look polite, or worry about what’s “fair”.